PRACTICAL RELIGION: 



A HELP FOE THE COMMON DAYS. 




J. E. MILLEK, D.D., 

Author op " Week-Day Religion," " Home-Making," 
"In His Steps," etc. 




PHILADELPHIA : 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 

AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK, 

No. 1334 CHESTNUT STREET. 



\ 






COPYRIGHT, 1888, BY 

THE TRUSTEES OF THE 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 
AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK. 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 



/*- 3 k)f/ 



The Library 
of Congress 



Westcott & Thomson, 
Stereolypers and Electrotypers, Philada. 



\ 



TO MY WIFE 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — The Sweet Odor of Prayer 9 

II. — The Blessing of Quietness 19 

III. — "Ye have done It unto Me" 31 

IV. — Transformed by Beholding . . 40 

V. — Being Christians on Weekdays 50 

^VI. — Compensation in Life 59 

VII.— The Cost of Being a Blessing 72 

a VIII. — Life as a Ladder 82 

■» IX. — Seeds of Light 91 

X. — Looking at the Eight Side 104 

XL— For Better or Worse 116 

N XII.—" Doe ye Nexte Thynge " 126 

XIII. — People as Means of Grace 139 

XIV.— Shall we Worry? 150 

XV.— A Word about Temper 161 

XVL— Forward, and not Back 173 

XVIL— The Duty of Forgetting Sorrow .... 183 

5 



6 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVIII.— People who Fail 196 

XIX.— Living Victoriously 209 

XX.— Shut In 222 

XXI. — Helpful People 235 

XXII.— Tired Feet 247 

XXIII.— Hands: A Study 259 

XXIV.— Learning our Lessons 274 

XXV— Broken Lives 289 

XXVI.— Coming to the End 305 



OPENING WORDS. 



This is not a volume of essays, but a collection 
of chapters written out of the author's own ex- 
perience in the hope that they may do a little, at 
least, to make the path plainer for others. The 
book is all practical, without a line that is not 
intended to bear upon the actual life of the common 
days. It is not meant to show people an easy way 
of living — there is no easy way to live worthily — 
but it seeks to show why it is worth while to live 
earnestly, at whatever cost. 

The book is designed to be a companion to 
Week- Bay Religion , which has met with such wide 
and continued favor, and which appears to have 
been used by the Master to help many people over 
the hard places and up to a fuller, richer life. The 



8 OPENING WORDS. 

hundreds of letters which have come from readers 
of that little book and of Silent Times have en- 
couraged the author to prepare the present volume 
on the same line, and it is now sent forth in the 
hope that it likewise may have a ministry of 
encouragement, stimulus, comfort or strength in 
some lives of toil, care, struggle or sorrow. 

J. E. M. 

1334 Chestnut Street, 
Philadelphia. 



PRACTICAL RELIGION, 



I. 

THE SWEET ODOR OF PRAYER. 

" When I look from my window at night, 
And the welkin above is all white, 

All throbbing and panting with stars, 
Among the majestic is standing 
Sandolphon, the angel, expanding 
His pinions in nebulous bars." 

Longfellow. 

rpRUE prayer is fragrant to God. This was 
"** taught in the Old Testament in one of those 
emblem-lessons which, when read in the light of 
the gospel, mean so much. The golden incense- 
altar was the altar of prayer, just as the altar of 
burnt-offering was the altar of atonement and con- 
secration. So every believing, loving heart is now 
a golden altar from which rise up to God sweet 
odors, bathing his very throne in fragrance. 
In Saint John's Apocalyptic visions we find again 

9 



10 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

the emblem of incense as a feature of the heavenly 
state. The redeemed are represented as having in 
their hands " golden vials, full of odors, which are 
the prayers of saints." The meaning is not that 
the saints in glory offer up prayers to God. Rather, 
the thought seems to be that earth's supplications 
rise up into heaven as sweet incense — that while 
humble believers in this world are engaged in offer- 
ing up prayers and supplications holy odors are 
wafted up before God. The picture seems designed 
to show us the heaven-side of earth's true worship 
— how our hearts' breathings of desire appear with- 
in the veil. 

For one thing, it shows that the prayers of be- 
lievers are not lost. Some people tell us there is no 
ear to hear when we speak our words of request and 
desire — that our petitions merely float off into the 
air, and that is the end of them. But here we get 
a glimpse inside heaven, and find our prayers caught 
and preserved in golden bowls. The thought is very 
beautiful. 

In one of the psalms there is a similar hint re- 
garding the tears of God's people. " Put thou my 
tears into thy bottle," cries David. In ancient 
times tear-bottles were sometimes used. When a 
man was in some sore distress, his friends would 



THE SWEET ODOR OF PRAYER. 11 

visit him, and, as he wept, would gather his tears 
and put them in a bottle, preserving them as sacred 
memorials of the event. Something like this ap- 
pears to have been in David's thought when, in sore 
distress, he made the prayer, " Put thou my tears 
into thy bottle." The words suggest the precious 
truth that God does indeed take notice of all our 
sorrows, and that he treasures up the remembrance 
of our griefs. Our very tears he gathers, and as it 
were puts them in bottles, that they may not be lost 
or forgotten. This is one of those incidental allu- 
sions which show us how deeply God loves us and 
how tender is his care. 

The picture of the golden bowls in heaven con- 
taining earth's prayers shows us like precious re- 
gard in the divine heart for the desires and suppli- 
cations which believing ones put up to God. As 
they rise in holy breathings or in earnest cries he re- 
ceives them — every sigh, every yearning, every plead- 
ing, every intercession of love, every heart-hunger 
— and puts them all into golden bowls, that none of 
them may be lost. Often our prayers may seem 
to remain long unanswered, for some blessings are 
so rich that they cannot be prepared for us in a day, 
but we may be sure that they are not lost nor for- 
gotten. They are sacredly treasured and are always 



12 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

before God, and in due time they will receive 
gracious and wise answer. 

The picture of the incense in the golden bowls in 
heaven shows, also, that the prayers of believers are 
t very precious in God's sight. Burning incense 
made a most grateful and delicious perfume. Fre- 
quently in the Scriptures acceptable prayer is de- 
scribed as producing before God a sweet odor. 
"The Lord smelled a sweet savor" is the Bible 
way of saying that God was pleased with the wor- 
ship rendered to him. There is an exquisite beauty 
in the thought that true prayer is fragrance to God 
as it rises from the golden altars of believing, lov- 
ing hearts. The pleadings and supplications of his 
people on the earth are w r afted up to him from low- 
ly homes, from humble sanctuaries, from stately ca- 
thedrals, from sick-rooms and from the darkened 
chambers of sorrow as the breath of flowers is 
wafted to us from rich gardens and fragrant 
fields. 

" There was a fitness, in the nature of things," 
says Dr. MacMillan, in a sermon on fragrance, " in 
incense being regarded as embodied prayer. Per- 
fume is the breath of flowers, the sweetest expres- 
sion of their inmost being, an exhalation of their 
very life. It is a sign of perfect purity, health and 



THE SWEET ODOR OF PRAYER. 13 

vigor, it is a symptom of full and joyous existence 
— for disease and decay and death yield, not pleasant 
but revolting odors — and, as such, fragrance is in 
nature what prayer is in the human world. Prayer 
is the breath of life, the expression of the souFs 
best, holiest and heavenliest aspirations, the symp- 
tom and token of its spiritual health. The natu- 
ral counterparts of the prayers that rise from the 
closet and the sanctuary are to be found in the 
delicious breathings, sweetening all the air, from 
gardens of flowers, from clover-crofts or thymy 
hillsides or dim pine woods, and which seem to be 
grateful, unconscious acknowledgments from the 
heart of Nature for the timely blessings of the 
great world-covenant, dew to refresh and sunshine 
to quicken." 

This thought is very beautiful — that the frag- 
ance which rises from garden, field and wood is 
earth's prayer to God — but still more beautiful is 
the thought that true prayer is itself fragrance to 
God, that he delights in it as we delight in the 
perfume of sweet flowers. 

There is also rich instruction for us concerning 
prayer in the way the incense was prepared and 
offered. For one thing, the ingredients for the 
incense were divinely prescribed : " The Lord said 



14 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

unto Moses, Take unto thee sweet spices, stacte, and 
onycha, and galbanum ; these sweet spices with pure 
frankincense : of each shall there be a like weight : 
and thou shalt make it a perfume, a confection after 
the art of the apothecary, tempered together, pure 
and holy." The priest might not prepare any sort 
of mixture he pleased, but must use precisely what 
God had commanded. Any humanly-devised com- 
pound was an abomination. In like manner are 
there divine instructions concerning the elements 
that must mingle in acceptable prayer. It must be 
the prayer of faith. There must be penitence and 
contrition in it. It must contain thanksgiving and 
submission. It must be the kind of prayer that 
God has commanded or it will not rise to heaven 
as sweet incense. 

The incense did not give forth its perfume until 
it was burning, and the only fire allowed to be 
used in kindling it was holy fire from the altar 
of burnt-offering. Mere cold words do not make 
prayer. There can be no incense-prayer without 
fire — the fire of love ; and the fire must be kindled 
in the heart by coals from the altar of Calvary, by 
the love of God shed abroad by the Holy Spirit. 

There is another rich suggestion concerning the 
incense as used in the ancient service. At the same 



THE SWEET ODOR OF PRAYER. 15 

time that the incense was burning on the golden 
altar within the sacrifice of atonement was burning 
on the altar of burnt-offering in the court without. 
The fire was carried from the sacrificial altar to 
kindle the incense. No other fire was permitted. 
The incense-odor would have been an abomination 
to God had not the smoke of the burnt-offering 
mingled and ascended with it. The teaching is that 
there will be no sweet savor in our prayers, no 
acceptableness before God, unless they are cleansed 
by the merits of Christ's atonement. We can 
approach God only in the precious name of Jesus 
Christ and in dependence on his sacrifice for us. 
There is another Apocalyptic picture which has 
also an interesting suggestion : " Another angel 
came and stood over the altar, having a golden 
censer ; and there was given unto him much in- 
cense, that he should offer it with the prayers of 
all saints upon the golden altar." The teaching is 
that the prayers of believers, even of the holiest 
saints, are not in themselves acceptable to God. At 
the best they are imperfect and defiled, because 
they come from imperfect and defiled hearts. The 
" much incense " that was added to the prayers of 
all the saints upon the golden altar was nothing less 
than the odors of the precious sacrifice and ever- 



16 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

availing intercession of Christ, "who hath given 
himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God, 
for a sweet-smelling savor." 

If we would pray acceptably, it must be, there- 
fore, in dependence on Jesus Christ, our High 
Priest in heaven, who shall take the petitions 
from our stained and unholy lips, cleanse them of 
their sin and fault and defilement, and then add 
to them the pure incense of his own holy offering 
and intercession and present them to the Father. 
That is what praying in the name of Christ means. 
Praying thus, our prayers are sweet odors to God. 
The thoughts and words that leave our hearts and 
lips spotted and unholy, without any beauty or 
sweetness, when they come up before God have 
become precious perfumes. 

The old Talmudic legend of Sandolphon, the 
angel of prayer, suggests a like wonderful trans- 
formation as taking place in the human petitions 
that go up from earth's lowly places and from 
unholy lips to heaven's gate. Longfellow has 
wrought the beautiful legend into verse, telling 
of Sandolphon, the angel of prayer — 

"How erect at the outermost gates 
Of the City Celestial he waits, 

With his feet on the ladder of light, 



THE SWEET ODOR OF PRAYER. 17 

That, crowded with angels unnumbered, 
By Jacob was seen as he slumbered 
Alone in the desert at night." 

Then the poet goes on to tell how serene in the 
rapturous throng, unmoved among the other angels, 

"the deathless 
Sandolphon stands listening breathless 
To sounds that ascend from below — 

"From the spirits on earth that adore, 
From the souls that entreat and implore 

In the fervor and passion of prayer ; 
From the hearts that are broken with losses, 
And weary with dragging the crosses 

Too heavy for mortals to bear. 

"And he gathers the prayers as he stands, 
And they change into flowers in his hands — 

Into garlands of purple and red ; 
And beneath the great arch of the portal, 
Through the streets of the City Immortal, 

Is wafted the fragrance they shed." 

This old rabbinical legend, though but a legend, 
surely does not exaggerate the truth about the 
acceptableness of prayer. Earth's sighs of faith 
and love and heart-huuger, though without beauty 
or sweetness or worthiness in themselves, float 
upward and are caught by the listening Intercessor, 



18 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

and in his holy, radiant hands, bearing yet the nail- 
marks, are transformed into lovely and fragrant 
flowers, and pour their perfume throughout all 
heaven's glorious mansions. 



II. 

THE BLESSING OF QUIETNESS. 

"Drop Thy still dews of quietness 
Till all our strivings cease; 
Take from our souls the strain and stress, 
And let our ordered lives confess 
The beauty of thy peace." 

Whittier. 

QUIETNESS, like mercy, is twice blessed: it 
blesseth him that is quiet, and it blesseth the 
man's friends and neighbors. Talk is good in its 
way. " There is a time to speak," but there is also 
" a time to be silent," and in silence many of life's 
sweetest benedictions come. 

An Italian proverb says, " He that speaks doth 
sow ; he that holds his peace doth reap." We all 
know the other saying which rates speech as silver 
and silence as gold. There are in the Scriptures, 
too, many strong persuasives to quietness and many 
exhortations against noise. It was prophesied of 
the Christ: "He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause 
his voice to be heard in the street." As we read 

19 



20 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

the Gospels we see that our Lord's whole life was 
a fulfillment of this ancient prophecy. He made 
no noise in the world. He did his work without 
excitement, without parade, without confusion. 
He wrought as the light works — silently, yet 
pervasively and with resistless energy. 

Quietness is urged, too, on Christ's followers. 
"Study to be quiet," writes an apostle. " Busy- 
bodies " the same apostle exhorts that " with quiet- 
ness they work." Prayers are to be made for 
rulers "that we may lead a quiet and peaceable 
life." Another apostle, writing to Christian women, 
speaks of their true adornment as being " the orna- 
ment of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the 
sight of God of great price." Solomon rates quiet- 
ness in a home far above the best of luxuries : 

"Better is a dry morsel and quietness therewith, 
Than an house full of feasting with strife." 

A prophet declares the secret of power in these 
words : " In quietness and confidence shall be your 
strength ;" and likewise says, " The work of right- 
eousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteous- 
ness quietness and assurance for ever." It is set 
down also as one of the blessings of God's people 
that they shall dwell in "quiet resting-places." 



THE BLESSING OF QUIETNESS. 21 

These are but a few of very many scriptural 
words concerning quietness, but they are enough 
to indicate several lessons that we may profitably 
consider. 

We should be quiet toward God. The expression 
" Rest in the Lord," in one of the Psalms, is in the 
margin " Be silent to the Lord." We are not to 
speak back to God when he speaks to us. We are 
not to reason with him or dispute with him, but 
are to bow in silent and loving acquiescence before 
him : " Be still, and know that I am God." It is 
in those providences which cut sorely into our lives 
and require sacrifice and loss on our part that we 
are specially called to this duty. There is a pa- 
thetic illustration of silence to God in the case of 
Aaron when his sons had offered strange fire, and 
had died before the Lord for their disobedience and 
sacrilege. The record says, "And Aaron held his 
peace." He even made no natural human outcry 
of grief. He accepted the terrible penalty as un- 
questionably just, and bowed in the acquiescence 
of faith. 

This silence to God should be our attitude in all 
times of trial when God's ways with us are bitter 
and painful. Why should w r e complain at anything 
that our Father may do ? We have no right to 



22 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

utter a word of murmuring, for he is our sovereign 
Lord, and our simple duty is instant, unquestioning 
submission. Then we have no reason to complain, 
for we know that all God's dealings with us are in 
loving wisdom. His will is always best for us, 
whatever sacrifice or suffering it may cost. 

"Thou layest thy hand on the fluttering heart, 

And sayest, " Be still !" 
The silence and shadow are only a part 

Of thy sweet will; 
Thy presence is with me, and where thou art 

I fear no ill." 

We should train ourselves to be quiet also toward 
men. There are times when we should speak and 
when words are mighty and full of blessing. Uni- 
versal dumbness would not be a boon to the world. 
Among the most beneficent of God's gifts to us is 
the power of speech. And we are to use our 
tongues. There are some people who are alto- 
gether too quiet in certain directions and toward 
certain persons. There is no place where good 
words are more fitting than between husband and 
wife, yet there are husbands and wives who pass 
weeks and months together in almost unbroken 
silence. They will travel long journeys side by 
side in the railway-car, and utter scarcely a word 



THE BLESSING OF QUIETNESS. 23 

in the whole distance. They will walk to and from 
church, and neither will speak. In the home-life 
they will pass whole days with nothing more in the 
form of speech between them than an indifferent 
remark about the weather, a formal inquiry and 
a monosyllabic answer. 

"According to Milton, Eve kept silence in Eden 
to hear her husband talk," said a gentleman to a 
lady, adding in a melancholy tone, "Alas ! there 
have been no Eves since !" — " Because," quickly 
retorted the lady, "there have been no husbands 
worth listening to." Perhaps the retort was just. 
Husbands certainly ought to have something to say 
when they come into their homes from the busy 
world outside. They are usually genial enough in 
the circles of business or politics or literature, and 
are able to talk so as to interest others. Ought 
they not to seek to be as genial in their own homes, 
especially toward their own wives? Most women, 
too, are able to talk in general society. Why, then, 
should a wife fall into such a mood of silence the 
moment she and her husband are alone ? It was 
Franklin who wisely said, "As we must account 
for every idle word, so must we for every idle 
silence." We must not forget that sileuce may 
be sadly overdone, especially in homes. 



24 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

There are other silences that are also to be de- 
plored. People keep in their hearts unspoken the 
kindly words they might utter — ought to utter — in 
the ears of the weary, the soul-hungry and the sor- 
rowing about them. The ministry of good words 
is one of wondrous power, yet many of us are 
wretched misers with our gold and silver coin of 
speech. Is any miserliness so mean? Ofttimes 
we allow hearts to starve close beside us, though in 
our very hands we have abundance to feed them. 
One who attends the funeral of any ordinary man 
and listens to what his neighbors have to say about 
him as they stand by his coffin will hear enough 
kind words spoken to have brightened whole years 
of his life. But how was it when the man was 
living, toiling and struggling among these very 
people? Ah! they were not so faithful then with 
their grateful, appreciative words. They were too 
quiet toward him then. Silence was overdone. 

Quietness is carried too far when it makes us 
disloyal to the hearts that crave our words of love 
and sympathy. But there is a quietness toward 
others which all should cultivate. There are many 
words spoken which ought never to pass the door 
of the lips. There are people who seem to exercise 
no restraint whatever on their speech. They allow 



THE BLESSING OF QUIETNESS. 25 

every passing thought or feeling to take form in 
words. They never think what the effect of their 
words will be — how they will fly like arrows shot 
by some careless marksman and will pierce hearts 
they were never meant to hurt. Thus friendships 
are broken and injuries are inflicted which can 
never be repaired. Careless words are for ever 
making grief and sorrow in tender spirits. AVe 
pity the dumb whom sometimes we meet. Dumb- 
ness is more blessed by far than speech if all we 
can do with our marvelous gift is to utter bitter, 
angry, abusive or sharp, cutting words. 

" I heedlessly opened the cage 

And suffered my bird to go free, 
And, though I besought it with tears to return, 

It nevermore came back to me. 
It nests in the wildwood and heeds not my call ; 
Oh, the bird once at liberty who can enthrall ? 

" I hastily opened my lips 

And uttered a word of disdain 
That wounded a friend, and for ever estranged 

A heart I would die to regain. 
But the bird once at liberty who can enthrall ? 
And the word that's once spoken, oh who can recall ?" 

Rose Terry Cooke in one of her poems — " Un- 
returning" — shows in very strong phrase the irrep- 
arableness of the harm done or the hurt given by 



26 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

unkind words. Flowers fade, but there will be more 
flowers another year — -just as sweet ones, too, as those 
that are gone. Snow melts and disappears, but it will 
snow again. The crystals of dew on leaf and grass- 
blade vanish when the sun rises, but to-morrow 
morning there will be other dewdrops as brilliant 
as those which are lost. But words once uttered 
can never be said over to be changed, nor can 
they ever be gotten back. 

" Never shall thy spoken word 
Be again unsaid, unheard. 
Well its work the utterance wrought, 
Woe or weal — what'er it brought : 
Once for all the rune is read, 
Once for all the judgment said. 
Though it pierced, a poisoned spear, 
Through the soul thou holdest dear, 
Though it quiver, fierce and deep, 
Through some stainless spirit's sleep ; 
Idle, vain, the flying sting 
That a passing rage might bring, 
Speech shall give it fangs of steel, 
Utterance all its barb reveal. 

" Give thy tears of blood and fire, 
Pray with pangs of mad desire, 
Offer life and soul and all, 
That one sentence to recall ; 
Wrestle with its fatal wrath, 
Chase with flying feet its path ; 



THE BLESSING OF QUIETNESS. 27 

Kue it all thy lingering days, 
Hide it deep with love and praise, — 
Once for all thy word is sped ; 
None evade it but the dead. 
All thy travail will be vain : 
Spoken words come not again." 

Another kind of common talk that had better be 
repressed into complete silence is the miserable gos- 
sip which forms so large a part — let ns confess it and 
deplore it — of ordinary parlor conversation. Few 
appreciative and kindly things are spoken of absent 
ones, but there is no end to criticism, snarling and 
backbiting. The most unsavory bits of scandal are 
served with relish, and no character is proof against 
the virulence and maliciousness of the tongues that 
chatter on as innocently and glibly as if they were 
telliug sweet stories of good. It certainly would 
be infinitely better if all this kind of speech were 
reduced to utter silence. It were better that the 
ritual of fashion prescribed some sort of a dumb 
pantomime for social calls, receptions and Ute-d-tMes 
in place of any conversation whatsoever if there is 
nothing to be talked about but the faults and foibles 
and the characters and doings of absent people. 
Will not some new Peter the Hermit preach a 
crusade against backbiting ? Shall we not have a 
new annual " week of prayer " to cry to God for 



28 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

the gift of silence when we have nothing good or 
true or beautiful to say ? No victories should be 
more heroically battled for or more thankfully re- 
corded than victories of silence when we are tempted 
to speak unhallowed words of others. 

Silence is better, also, than any words of bicker- 
ing and strife. There is no surer, better way of 
preventing quarrels than by the firm restraining of 
speech. "A soft answer turneth away wrath ;" but 
if we cannot command the " soft answer " when an- 
other person is angry, the second-best thing is not 
to speak at all. " Grievous words stir up anger." 
Many a long, fierce strife that has produced untold 
pain and heartburning would never have been 
anything more than a momentary flash of anger 
if one of the parties had practiced the holy art 
of silence. 

Some one tells of the following arrangement 
which worked successfully in preventing family 
quarrels : " You see, sir," said an old man, speak- 
ing of a couple in his neighborhood who lived in 
perfect harmony, " they had agreed between them- 
selves that whenever he came home a little contrairy 
and out of temper he would wear his hat on the 
back of his head, and then she never said a word ; 
and if she came in a little cross and crooked, she 



THE BLESSING OF QUIETNESS. 29 

would throw her shawl over her left shoulder, and 
he never said a word." So they never quarreled. 

He who has learned to be silent spares himself 
ofttimes from confusion. Many men have owed 
their reputation for great wisdom quite as much to 
their silence as to their speech. They have not 
spoken the many foolish things of the glib talker, 
and have uttered only few and well-considered 
words. Says Carlyle, denouncing the rapid ver- 
biage of shallow praters, " Even triviality and im- 
becility that can sit silent — how T respectable are 
they in comparison !" An English writer gives 
the story of a groom wedded to a lady of wealth. 
He was in constant fear of being ridiculed by his 
wife's guests. A clergyman said to him, "Wear 
a black coat and hold your tongue." The new 
husband followed the advice, and soon was con- 
sidered one of the finest gentlemen in the country. 
The power of keeping quiet would be worth a 
great deal to many people whose tongues are for 
ever betraying their ignorance and revealing their 
true character. 

All true culture is toward the control and the 
restraining of speech. Christian faith gives a quiet- 
ness which in itself is one of life's holiest bene- 
dictions. It gives the quietness of peace — a quiet- 



30 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

ness which the wildest storms cannot disturb, which 
is a richer possession than all the world's wealth or 
power. 

" Study to be quiet." The lesson may be hard 
to many of us, but it is well worth all the cost 
of learning. It brings strength and peace to the 
heart. Speech is good, but ofttimes silence is bet- 
ter. He who has learned to hold his tongue is a 
greater conqueror than the warrior who subdues an 
empire. The power to be silent under provocations 
and wrongs and in the midst of danger and alarms 
is the power of the noblest, royalest victoriousness. 



III. 

YE HAVE DONE IT UNTO ME. 

"Without a recognition 

You passed Him yesterday — 
Jostled aside, unhelped, his mute petition — 
And calmly went your way. 

"Oh, dreamers, dreaming that your faith is keeping 
All service free from blot, 
Christ daily walks your streets, sick, suffering, weeping, 
And ye perceive him not." 

Margaret J. Preston. 

fTIHOSE certainly seem strange words which our 
Lord says he will speak on the judgment-day 
to the multitudes before him. We are taught else- 
where that faith in Christ is the vital thing in de- 
termining one's eternity, yet Christ himself, in por- 
traying the judgment, says not a word about be- 
lieving on him or confessing him. Those who are 
welcomed to the kingdom prepared for them from 
the foundation of the world are those who have fed 
the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, covered the 
shivering and cold, visited the sick and cared for 
the prisoner. Are we, then, to reverse our cher- 

31 



32 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

ished evangelical belief that men are saved by 
faith, and not by works ? May we not say that 
the good deeds here described are the fruit of grace 
in the heart ? We are not saved by our own min- 
istries of love ; but if we are saved, these are the 
acts we will perform. 

Our Lord's words show us the kind of Christian 
life we should live in this world. We say we love 
Christ, and he tells us that we must show our 
affection for him in kindnesses to his friends. 
Then he goes farther and puts himself before us, 
to be served and helped as if personally in every 
needy and suffering one who comes to us : " I was 
an hungred, and ye gave me meat. ... I was sick, 
and ye visited me." — " When saw we thee an hun- 
gred, and fed thee ? . . . When saw we thee sick 
. . . and came unto thee?" — " Inasmuch as ye 
have done it unto one of the least of these my 
brethren, ye have done it unto me." 

There is something inexpressibly beautiful in the 
revelation which these words of our Lord bring to 
our hearts. Christ himself is ever standing before 
us, appealing to us for love, for sympathy, for 
ministry. How all human lives about us are 
transfigured by this word which tells us that in 
the lowliest Jesus himself waits ! No wonder this 



YE HAVE DONE IT UNTO ME. 33 

sweet truth has wrought itself into numberless 
legends beautiful telling how abject forms, when 
served in the Master's name in time of need, sud- 
denly changed into radiant loveliness, revealing 
themselves as Jesus the glorious One. There is 
the legend of St. Christopher, who in carrying the 
little child over the wild stream in the darkness 
and the storm found that he was bearing the Christ 
himself. There is the story of Elizabeth of Hun- 
gary, whose kindness to the sick and the poor was 
so great. Once she brought a leprous child to her 
palace and laid it in her own bed, because there 
was no other place to lay it. Her husband heard 
of it, and came in some displeasure and drew down 
the cover of the bed to see if the object concealed 
there was really so loathsome as he had heard, and, 
lo ! instead of the festering and leprous body, he saw 
the Saviour radiant with glory, and turned awe- 
stricken, and yet glad. Then the legend of the 
Holy Grail is familiar to all. The Holy Grail was 
the cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper. 
According to the tradition, this cup was lost, and it 
was a favorite enterprise of the knights of Arthur's 
court to go in quest of it. One of the most de- 
lightful of these stories is that which Mr. Lowell 
tells in his "Sir Launfal." Far away over cold 



34 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

mountains and through fierce storms rode the 
brave young knight till youth turned to age and 
his hair was gray. At last, after a vain search, he 
turned homeward, an old man, bent, worn out and 
frail, with garments thin and spare. As he drew 
on there lay a leper, lank and wan, cowering before 
him. " For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms/' 
the leper said. Sir Launfal saw in the beggar an 
image of Jesus. 

" He parted in twain his single crust, 
He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, 
And gave the leper to eat and drink." . . . 

Suddenly a light shone round about the place. 

"The leper no longer crouched at his side, 
But stood before him glorified, 
Shining and tall and fair and straight 
As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate." 

Sweetly now he spoke as the knight listened : 

"In many climes, without avail, 
Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail; 
Behold, it is here — this cup which thou 
Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now; 
This crust is my body broken for thee, 
This water His blood that died on the tree; 
The Holy Supper is kept indeed 
In whatso we share with another's need — 



YE HAVE DONE IT UNTO ME. 35 

Not what we give, but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare : 
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three — 
Himself, his hungering neighbor and me." 

A popular author has written a tender little story 
showing how these opportunities for serving Christ 
fill the plain, common days of the lowliest life. A 
poor man whose heart God had touched dreamt 
one night that one called him by name. As he 
listened he heard also these words : " Look to- 
morrow on the street. I am coming." He knew 
not the meaning of his singular dream, yet his 
heart was strangely warm all the day. He wrought 
in his little shop and watched the people as they 
went by. By and by came an old soldier with a 
shovel, and began to clear away the snow from 
the sidewalk. The shoemaker saw him, and ob- 
served, at length, that the soldier was very weary. 
Going to the door, he invited him to come in and 
have some warm tea. The exhausted man grate- 
fully accepted the invitation, and, greatly refreshed 
by the kindness, at length went his way. 

Later a woman in poor garb and carrying a 
child stopped before the window. Both mother and 
child were thinly clad, and the child was crying. 
Again the shoemaker opened his door, called to the 



36 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

woman and bade her come into his shop, where it 
was warm. The astonished mother obeyed, and, 
sitting by the stove, told her story of hunger and 
want. Soon the old man brought food for her and 
her child, sending them forth warmed and fed, and 
with some money to provide for further need. 

Next it was an old apple-woman who drew the 
shoemaker's attention. A rude boy was annoying 
her. Again the kind-hearted man went out of his 
shop and acted as peacemaker and friend. 

Thus the day passed. At his work Martuin 
remembered continually the vision of the night 
before, and watched all the hours for the appearing 
of Him who had promised to come. He saw no 
bright presence, but a number of poor people he 
helped and comforted. 

Night came, and the shoemaker took down his 
New Testament to read. Again he seemed to hear 
some one stepping behind him, and there was a 
voice in his ear : " Martuin, did you not recognize 
me?" — " Whom?" asked the old man.— " Me," re- 
peated the voice. " It is I ;" and the old soldier 
Martuin had fed and warmed stepped from the 
shadows, smiled and vanished. — "And this is I," 
said the voice again, while from the darkness the 
woman and her child appeared, smiled and van- 



YE HA VE DONE IT UNTO ME. 37 

ishecl. — "And this is I," again spoke the voice, 
and the poor apple-woman stepped forward, beamed 
a kindly look and passed out of sight. 

The old shoemaker put on his glasses and began 
to read where his New Testament chanced to open. 
At the top of the page he read : " For I was an 
hungred, and ye gave me meat : I was thirsty, and 
ye gave me drink : I was a stranger, and ye took 
me in." Then a little farther down he read again : 
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the 
least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto 
me." 

" Then Martuin understood," says the little book, 
" that his dream did not deceive him — that the Sa- 
viour really called on him that day, and that he 
really received him." 

The other side of this truth we must also notice : 
" I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat ; I 
was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink. . . . Inas- 
much as ye did it not to one of the least of these, 
ye did it not to me." The Lord Jesus is always 
standing before us and always coming up to us in 
the persons of his poor and needy ones. And what 
if we pay no heed to him? What if we coldly 
turn him away? 

There is another legend which illustrates this 



38 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

side of the lesson. Once an angel whispered to 
a good woman in the morning that her Lord was 
coming to her house that day. She made ready 
for him with loving care, and eagerly watched all 
day for his coming. At twilight a poor little child 
came to her door and craved shelter for the night, 
but the woman was thinking so much of her Lord 
that she only gave the child a little money and sent, 
him on into the gathering darkness. But as he 
turned away the child grew fair and beautiful, and 
as he vanished in a flood of glory the good woman 
heard the words, "Adine, behold thy Lord !" He 
had come, had not been recognized, had been treated 
coldly, and had passed beyond recall, vanishing as 
he revealed himself. 

The lesson is intensely practical ; it touches all 
our common daily life. If we neglect one of 
Christ's little ones, we shall hear on judgment- 
day, " I was hungry, and you gave me no bread. 
I was shivering in the cold, and you clothed me 
not. I was a homeless stranger at your door, and 
you showed me no pity." It seems a little thing 
to treat with neglect, or even with unkindness, 
some needy one. We cannot see how it matters 
to us, what claim the person has on us, why we 
need turn aside from our own way to do anything. 



YE HAVE DONE IT UNTO ME. 39 

This picture of the final judgment helps us to see 
why it does matter, that the person really has a 
claim on us, that it is indeed the same as if it were 
Jesus himself who was in need. 

It must be noticed that it will be the things men 
have failed to do which shall turn the scales on the 
great trial-day. We must meet in judgment our neg- 
lects as well as our sinful acts. Those who are sent 
to the left hand are not described as great sinners. 
They have not been cruel, inhuman or unjust. 
They are not charged with having wronged or 
injured one of Christ's little ones. Only neglects 
are in the indictment. They have seen little ones 
hungry, and have not fed them ; thirsty, and have 
not given them the cup of cold water ; shivering 
in the cold, and have not clothed them ; sick, and 
have not visited them. They have merely " passed 
by on the other side " when they have seen human 
need in their way which they might have relieved 
or sorrow which they might have comforted. 

We need to walk reverently and thoughtfully 
through life, not jostling roughly against the 
meanest person we meet, not looking coldly on 
the poorest that comes to our doors, lest in the 
judgment we may find that we have neglected to 
show kindness to our blessed Lord. 



IV. 

TRANSFORMED BY BEHOLDING. 

"Renew thine image, Lord, in me; 
Lowly and gentle may I be: 

No charms but these to thee are dear; 
No anger mayst thou ever find, 
No pride in my unruffled mind, 

But faith and heaven-born peace be there." 

Gerhaedt. 

rnHE deepest yearning of every true Christian 
life is to be like Christ. But what is Christ 
like? In the fourth century the empress Con- 
stantine sent to Eusebius, begging him to send 
her a likeness of the Saviour. "What do you 
mean," Eusebius asked in reply, " by a likeness of 
Christ? Not, of course, the image of him as he 
is truly and unchangeably ; not his human nature 
glorified, as it was at the Transfiguration. . . . 
Since we confess that our Saviour is God and Lord, 
we prepare ourselves to see him as God; and if, in 
addition to this hope, you set high value on images 
of the Saviour, what better artist can there be than 
the God-word himself?" Thus he referred the 

40 



TRANSFORMED BY BEHOLDING. 41 

empress to the New Testament for the only true 
picture of Christ. 

When one turned to Jesus himself and gave 
utterance to his heart's yearning in the prayer, 
" Show us the Father," the answer was, " Look 
at me. He that hath seen me hath seen the Fa- 
ther." When we turn the pages of the Gospels 
and look upon the life of Christ as it is portrayed 
there in sweet gentleness, in radiant purity, in 
tender compassion, in patience under injury and 
wrong, in dying on the cross to save the guilty, we 
see the only true picture of Christ there is in this 
world. There is an old legend that Jesus left his 
likeness on the handkerchief the pitying woman 
gave him to wipe the sweat from his face as he 
went out to die ; yet this is but a legend, and the 
only image he really left in the world when he 
went away is that which we have in the gospel 
pages. Artists paint their conceptions of that 
blessed face, but there is more true Christ-likeness 
in a single verse in the New Testament than in all 
the faces of the Saviour that artists have ever 
drawn ; so we can even now look upon the holy 
beauty of Christ. 

One of John Bunyan's characters is made to say, 
" Wherever I have seen the print of his shoe in the 



42 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

earth, there have I coveted to set my foot too." 
To walk where our Master walked, to do the things 
he did, to have the same mind that was in him, to 
be like him, is the highest aim of every worthy 
Christian life; and when this longing springs up 
in our heart and we ask, " What is he like that I 
may imitate his beauty? Where can I find his 
portrait ?" we have but to turn to the pages of the 
gospel, and there our eyes can behold Him who is 
altogether lovely — in whom all glory and beauty 
shine. 

No sooner do we begin to behold the fair face 
that looks out at us from the gospel chapters than a 
great hope springs up in our hearts. We can be- 
come like Jesus. Indeed, if we are God's children, 
we shall become like him. We are foreordained to 
be conformed to his image. It matters not how 
faintly the divine beauty glimmers now in our 
soiled and imperfect lives : some day we shall be 
like him. As we struggle here with imperfections 
and infirmities, with scarcely one trace of Christ- 
likeness yet apparent in our life, we still may say, 
when we catch glimpses of the glorious loveliness 
of Christ, " Some day I shall be like that." 

But how may we grow into the Christlikeness of 
Christ ? Not merely by our own strugglings and 






TRANSFORMED BY BEHOLDING. 43 

strivings. We know what we want to be; but 
when we try to lift our own lives up to the 
beauty we see and admire, we find ourselves 
weighted down. We cannot make ourselves Christ- 
like by any efforts of our own. Nothing less than 
a divine power is sufficient to produce this trans- 
formation in our human nature. 

The Scripture describes the process. Beholding 
the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the im- 
age of the glory — that is, we are to find the like- 
ness of Christ, and are to look upon it and ponder 
it, gazing intently and lovingly upon it, and as we 
gaze we are transformed and grow like Christ; 
something of the glory of his face passes into our 
dull faces and stays there, shining out in us. 

We know well the influence on our own natures 
of things we look upon familiarly and constantly. 
A man sits before the photographer's camera, and 
the image of his face prints itself on the glass in 
the darkened chamber of the instrument. Some- 
thing like this process is going on continually in 
every human soul. But the man is the camera, 
and the things that pass before him cast their 
images within him and print their pictures on his 
soul. Every strong, pure human friend with 
whom we move in sympathetic association does 



44 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

something toward the transforming of our charac- 
ter into his own image. The familiar scenes and 
circumstances amid which we live and move are in 
a very real sense photographed upon our souls. 
Refinement without us tends to the refining of our 
spirits. The same is true of all evil influences. 
Bad companionships degrade those who choose 
them. Thus even of human lives about us it is 
true that, beholding them, we are transformed 
into the same image. 

But it is true in a far higher sense of the behold- 
ing of Christ. It is not merely a brief glance now 
and then that is here implied, not the turning of 
the eye toward him for a few hurried moments in 
the early morning or in the late evening, but a con- 
stant, loving and reverent beholding of him through 
days and years till his image burns itself upon the 
soul. If we thus train our heart's eyes to look at 
Christ, we shall be transformed into his image. 

" Beholding we are changed." The verb is pas- 
sive. We do not produce the change. The mar- 
ble can never carve itself into the lovely figure that 
floats in the artist's mind : the transformation must 
be wrought with patience by the sculptor's own 
hands. We cannot change ourselves into the 
image of Christ's glory : we are changed. The 



TRANSFORMED BY BEHOLDING. 45 

work is wrought in us by the divine Spirit. We 
simply look upon the image of the Christ, and its 
blessed light streams in upon us and prints its own 
radiant glory upon our hearts. We have nothing 
to do but to keep our eyes fixed upon the mirrored 
beauty as the flowers hold up their faces toward the 
sun, and the transformation is divinely wrought in 
us. It is not wrought instantaneously. At first 
there are but dimmest glimmerings of the likeness 
of Christ. We cannot in a single day learn all the 
long, hard lessons of patience, meekness, unselfish- 
ness, humility, joy and peace. Little by little the 
change is wrought, and the beauty comes out as we 
continue to gaze upon Christ. Little by little the 
glory flows into our lives from the radiant face of 
the Master, and flows out again through our dull 
lives, transforming them. 

Even though but little seems to come from our 
yearnings and struggles after Christlikeness, God 
honors the yearning and the striving, and while we 
sit in the shadows of weariness, disheartened with 
our failures, he carries on the wwk within us, and 
with his own hands produces the divine beauty in 
our souls. There is a pleasant legend of Michael 
Angelo. He was engaged on a painting, but grew 
weary and discouraged while his work was yet in- 



46 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

complete, and at length fell asleep. Then while he 
slept an angel came, and, seizing the brush that 
had dropped from the tired artist's fingers, finished 
the picture, 

"Wrought the wondrous work — a love-thought carried 
Into colors fit and fair, completed." 

Angelo awoke at length, affrighted that he had 
slept and foregone his task in self-indulgence, but, 
looking at his canvas, his heart was thrilled with 
joy and his soul uplifted beyond measure, for he 
saw that while he had slept his picture had been 
finished, and that it had been 

" painted fairer 
Far than any picture of his making 
In the past, with tint and touch diviner, 
And a light of God above it breaking." 

So it is with all who truly long and strive after 
the heavenly likeness. Faint and discouraged, they 
think they are making no progress, no growth to- 
ward the divine image, but in the very time of 
their faintness and disheartenment, "when human 
hands are weary folded/' God's Spirit comes and 
silently fashions the beauty in their souls. When 
they awake, they shall see the work finished, and 
shall be satisfied in Christ's likeness. 

There is great comfort in this for many of the 



TRANSFORMED BY BEHOLDING. 47 

Father's weary children who earnestly long to 
become like the Master, and who struggle with- 
out ceasing to attain the divine image, but who 
seem to themselves never to make any progress. 
God is watching them, sees their strivings, is not 
impatient with their failures, and in the hours of 
quiet will send his angel to help them. Perhaps 
the very hours of their deepest discouragement 
may be the hours when they are growing the 
most, for then God works most helpfully in them. 

There is still another thought. The Revised 
"Version makes a change in the reading of the 
words about beholding the glory of the Lord, and 
puts them in this way : " We all, with unveiled 
face, reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, 
are transformed into the same image." According 
to this rendering we too become mirrors. We gaze 
upon the glory of the Lord, and as we gaze the 
glory streams upon us, and there is an image of 
Christ reflected and mirrored in us. Then others, 
looking upon us, see the image of Christ in our 
lives. 

We look into a little pool of still water at night 
and see the stars in it, or by day and see the blue 
sky, the passing clouds and the bright sun high in 
the heavens. So we look upon Christ in loving, 



48 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

adoring faith, and the glory shines down into our 
soul. Then our neighbors and friends about us 
look at us, see our character, watch our conduct, 
observe our disposition and temper and all the play 
of our life, and as they behold us they perceive the 
image of Christ in us. We are the mirrors, and 
in us men see the beauty of the Lord. 

A little child was thinking about the unseen 
Christ to whom she prayed, and came to her 
mother with the question, " Is Jesus like anybody 
I know ?" The question was not an unreasonable 
one : it was one to which the child should have 
received the answer "Yes." Every true disciple 
of Christ ought to be an answer — in some sense, 
at least — to the child's inquiry. Every little one 
ought to see Christ's beauty mirrored in its moth- 
er's face. Every Sabbath-school teacher's character 
should reflect some tracings of the eternal Love on 
which the scholars may gaze. Whoever looks upon 
the life of any Christian should see in it at once 
the reflection of the beauty of Christ. 

Of course the mirroring never can be perfect. 
Muddy pools give only dim reflections of the blue 
sky and the bright sun. Too often our lives are 
like muddy pools. A broken mirror gives a very 
imperfect reflection of the face that looks into it. 



TRANSFORMED BY BEHOLDING. 49 

Many times our lives are broken, shattered mirrors 
and show only little fragments of the glory they 
are intended to reflect. If one holds the back of 
a mirror toward the sun, there will be in it no 
reflection of the orb of day ; the mirror's face must 
be turned toward the object whose image one wants 
to catch. If we would have Christ mirrored in 
our lives, we must turn and hold our faces always 
Christward. If we continue ever beholding the 
glory, gazing upon it, we shall be mirrors reflect- 
ing Him into whose face we gaze. Then those 
who look upon our lives will see in us a dim image 
at lea^t, a little picture, of Christ. 



V. 

BEING CHRISTIANS ON WEEKDAYS. 

"There are in this loud stunning tide 
Of human care and crime 
With whom the melodies abide 

Of th' everlasting chime — 
Who carry music in their heart, 
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart, 
Plying their daily task with busier feet 
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat." 

Keble. 

TTOW to carry our religion into all parts of our 
-^ life is the question which perplexes many of 
us. It is not hard to be good on the quiet Sab- 
baths, when all the holy influences of the sanctuary 
and of the Christian home are about us. It is not 
hard, in such an atmosphere, to think of God, and 
to yield ourselves to the impact of the divine Spirit. 
It is easy then to accept the promises and allow 
them to twine themselves about our weakness, like 
a mother's arms about feeble infancy. Most of us 
have little trouble with doubts and fears or with 
temptations and trials while sitting in the peaceful 
retreats into which the Sabbath leads us. 

50 



BEING CHRISTIANS ON WEEKDAYS. 51 

Our trouble is in carrying this sweet, holy, rest- 
ful life out into the weekday world of toil, anxiety, 
strife and pain. Ofttimes with Monday morning 
we lose all the Sabbath calm and resume again the 
old experience of restless distraction. The restraints 
of godliness lose their power, and the enthusiasm 
for holy living, so strong yesterday, dies out in 
the midst of the world's chilling influences, and 
we drop back into the old habitudes and creep 
along again in the old dusty ways. 

The Sabbath has lifted us up for a day, but has 
not power to hold us up in sustained elevation of 
soul. The duties we saw so clearly and so firmly 
determined to do while sitting in the sanctuary we 
do not feel pressing upon us to-day with half the 
urgency of yesterday. Our high resolves and our 
excellent intentions have proved only like the morn- 
ing cloud and the early dew ; so our religion be- 
comes a sort of luxury to us — a bright unreal dream 
only which for one day in seven breaks into the 
worldliness and the self-seeking of our humdrum 
lives, giving us a period of elevation, but no per- 
manent uplifting. It is only as when one climbs 
up out of a valley into the pure air of a mountain- 
top for one hour, and then creeps down again and 
toils on as before amid the mists and in the deep 



52 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

shadows, but carrying none of the mountain's in- 
spiration or of the mountain's splendor with him 
back into the valley. 

Yet such a life has missed altogether the meaning 
of the religion of Christ, which is not designed to 
furnish merely a system of Sabbath oases across the 
desert of life, with nothing between but sand and 
glare. Both its precepts and its blessings are for 
all the days. He who worships God only on 
Sabbaths, and then ignores him or disobeys him 
on weekdays, really has no true religion. We are 
perpetually in danger of bisecting our life, calling 
one portion of it religious and the other secular. 
Young people, when they enter the church, are 
earnestly urged to Christian duty, and the im- 
pression made upon them is that Christian duty 
means reading the Bible and praying every day, 
attending upon the public means of grace, taking 
active part in some of the associations, missionary 
or charitable, which belong to the Church, and in 
private and personal ways striving to bring others 
to Christ. 

Now, important as these things are, they are 
by no means all the religious duties of any young 
Christian, and it is most fallacious teaching that 
emphasizes them as though they were all. 



BEING CHRISTIANS ON WEEKDAYS. 53 

Religion recognizes no bisecting into sacred and 
secular. "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or 
whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." It 
is just as much a part of Christian duty to do one's 
weekday work well as it is to pray well. " I must 
be about my Father's business/' said Jesus in the 
dawn of youth ; and what do we find him doing 
after this recognition of his duty ? Not preaching 
nor teaching, but taking up the common duties of 
common life and putting all his soul into them. 
He found the Father's business in his earthly 
home, in being a dutiful child subject to his parents, 
in being a diligent pupil in the village school, and 
later in being a conscientious carpenter. He did 
not find religion too spiritual, too transcendental, for 
weekdays. His devotion to God did not take him 
out of his natural human relationships into any 
realm of mere sentiment : it only made him all the 
more loyal to the duties of his place in life. 

We ought to learn the lesson. Religion is in- 
tensely practical. Only so far as it dominates one's 
life is it real. We must get the commandments 
down from the Sinaitic glory amid which they were 
first graven on stone by the finger of God and give 
them a place in the hard, dusty paths of earthly 
toil and struggle. We must get them off the tables 



54 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

of stone and have them written on the walls of our 
own hearts. We must bring the Golden Rule 
down from its bright setting in the teaching of our 
Lord and get it wrought into our daily, actual life. 
We say in creed, confession and prayer that we 
love God, and he tells us, if we do, to show it by 
loving our fellow-men, since professed love to God 
which is not thus manifested is not love at all. We 
talk about our consecration ; if there is anything 
genuine in consecration, it bends our wills to God's, 
it leads us to loyalty that costs, it draws our lives 
to lowly ministry. " One secret act of self-denial," 
says a thoughtful writer, " one sacrifice of inclina- 
tion to duty, is worth all the mere good thoughts, 
warm feelings, passionate prayers, in which idle 
people indulge themselves." 

"Faith's meanest deed more favor bears 
Where hearts and wills are weighed 
Than brightest transports, choicest prayers, 
Which bloom their hour and fade." 

We are too apt to imagine that holiness consists 
in mere good feeling toward God. It does not : 
it consists in obedience in heart and life to the 
divine requirements. To be holy is, first, to be set 
apart for God and devoted to God's service : " The 
Lord hath set apart him that is godly for himself;" 



BEING CHRISTIANS ON WEEKDAYS. 55 

but if we are set apart for God in this sense, it 
necessarily follows that we must live for God. We 
belong wholly to him, and any use of our life in 
any other service is sacrilege, as if one would rob 
the very altar of its smoking sacrifice to gratify 
one's common hunger. Our hands are God's, and 
can fitly be used only in doing his work ; our feet 
are God's, and may be employed only in walking in 
his ways and running his errands; our lips are 
God's, and should speak words only that honor him 
and bless others ; our hearts are God's, and must not 
be profaned by thoughts and affections that are not 
pure. 

Ideal holiness is no vague sentiment : it is in- 
tensely practical. It is nothing less than the bring- 
ing of every thought and feeling and act into obe- 
dience to Christ. We are quite in danger of leav- 
ing out the element of obedience in our concep- 
tion of Christian living. If we do this, our religion 
loses its strength and grandeur and becomes weak, 
nerveless and forceless. As one has said, " Let us 
be careful how we cull from the gospel such portions 
as are congenial, forge God's signature to the ex- 
cerpt, and apply the fiction as a delusive anodyne to 
our violated consciences. The beauties and graces 
of the gospel are all flung upon a background of 



56 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

requirements as inflexible as Sinai and the granite. 
Christ built even his glory out of obedience." 

Now, it is the weekday life, under the stress and 
the strain of temptation, far more than the Sunday 
life, beneath the gentle warmth of its favoring con- 
ditions, that really puts our religion to the test and 
shows what power there is in it. Not how well we 
sing and pray nor how devoutly we worship on the 
Lord's day, but how well we live, how loyally we 
obey the commandments, how faithfully we attend 
to all our duties, on the other days, tell what 
manner of Christians we really are. 

Nor can we be faithful toward God and ignore 
our human relationships. " It is impossible," says 
one, " for us to live in fellowship with God without 
holiness in all the duties of life. These things act 
and react on each other. Without a diligent and 
faithful obedience to the calls and claims of others 
upon us, our religious profession is simply dead. 
We cannot go from strife, breaches and angry words 
to God. Selfishness, an imperious will, want of 
sympathy with the sufferings and sorrows of other 
men, neglect of charitable offices, suspicions, hard 
censures of those with whom our lot is cast, will 
miserably darken our own hearts and hide the face 
of God from us." 



BEING CHRISTIANS ON WEEKDAYS. 57 

The one word which defines and describes all 
relative duties is the word love. Many people 
understand religion to include honesty, truthful- 
ness, justice, purity, but do not think of it as in- 
cluding just as peremptorily unselfishness, thought- 
fulness, kindness, patience, good temper and cour- 
tesy. We are commanded to put away lying, but 
in the same paragraph, and with equal urgency, we 
are enjoined to let all bitterness, wrath, anger, 
clamor and evil-speaking be put away, and to be 
kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one 
another. The law of love in all its most delicate 
shades of application to spirit, word, act and man- 
ner is the law of all true Christian living. 

Thus the religion of the Sabbath, like a precious 
perfume, must pervade all the days of the week. 
Its spirit of holiness and reverence must flow down 
into all the paths of every-day life. Its voices of 
hope and joy must become inspirations in all our 
cares and toils. Its exhortations must be the guide 
of hand and foot and finger in the midst of all trial 
and temptation. Its words of comfort must be as 
lamps to burn and shine in sick-rooms and in the 
chambers of sorrow. Its visions of spiritual beauty 
must be translated into reality in conduct and 
character. 



58 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

So, in all our life, the Sabbath's lessons must be 
lived out during the week ; the patterns of heavenly- 
things shown in the mount must be wrought into 
forms of reality and act and disposition and char- 
acter. The love of God which so warms our 
hearts as we think of it must flow out in love to 
men. We must be Christians on Monday as well 
as on the Sabbath. Our religion must touch every 
part of our life and transform it all into the beauty 
of holiness. 



VI. 

COMPENSATION IN LIFE. 
" For the rapture of love is linked with the pain or fear of 



And the hand that takes the crown must ache with many 

a cross; 
Yet he who hath never a conflict hath never a victor's 

palm, 
And only the toilers know the sweetness of rest and calm." 

Frances Kidley Havergal. 

T7JVERY shadow has its light; every night has 
"^ its morning ; every pang of pain has its thrill 
of pleasure ; every salt tear has its crystal beauty ; 
every weakness has its element of strength ; every 
loss has its gain. So all through life these bal- 
ancings run. 

He is not a thoughtful or reverent observer who 
has not been struck by this wonderful system of 
compensations found in all God's providences. 
Wherever we turn we can see it, if only we have 
eyes to see. It may be traced even in nature. 
Every hill or mountain has its corresponding val- 
ley. The disadvantages of any particular place 

59 



60 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

are balanced by advantages of some kind. Asher's 
portion was hilly, but in the rugged hills there 
were minerals; the paths were rough and steep, 
but there was iron at hand with which to prepare 
shoes for the hard climbing. Marah's waters were 
bitter and unfit to drink, but close beside the foun- 
tain grew the tree to sweeten them. Summer's heat 
is hard to endure, but it woos from the earth ten 
thousand lovely beauties of verdure, foliage, flower 
and harvest. Autumn comes with its fading leaves, 
its perishing flowers, its dying life and its sadness, 
but it is the season of purple vintage, mellowing 
fruits and falling nuts, while the foliage in its very 
decay surpasses the glory of its freshest greenness. 
Winter has its short days, its snows and its piercing 
colds, but it brings its long nights, its social cheer, 
its crystal beauty, its merry sports, while beneath 
its fleecy blankets the roots of trees, grasses, grains 
and flowers are nourished. Spring has its rains, 
its melting snows, its cloudy skies, its impassable 
country-roads, but it has also its bursting buds, its 
return of birds, its warm breathings and all its 
prophecies of life and beauty. 

In human life also we find the same law of com- 
pensation. Men's lots are not so unlike as we oft- 
times think them to be. Every ill has somewhere 



COMPENSATION IN LIFE. 61 

a good to balance it, and every envied portion has 
something in it which detracts from its enjoyment. 
It makes a great difference from what point of view 
we look at life's experiences and circumstances. 
From one outlook only the attractive features are 
seen, while the drawbacks are concealed in the 
brightness. From another position only the un- 
favorable qualities appear, while the beauties are 
eclipsed in the shadows. There is a great differ- 
ence also in people's eyes. Some see only the 
sternness and the blemishes, but surely they are 
wiser who see even the little bits of loveliness that 
gleam out always amid the sternness like beautiful 
vines and sweet flowers on the cold, bare mountain- 
crags. 

There is never an inconvenience in life but has 
its compensating benefit, if only we have patience 
and faith enough to find it. The world is very 
large, with a great many people besides ourselves 
in it, and we must not expect all the compensation 
to come to us. Sometimes w T e may have to take a 
measure of discomfort that our neighbor may reap 
a blessing. The rain that hurts our grass may be 
a boon to his garden. The wind that impedes the 
speed of our boat may fill his sails. " It's an ill 
wind that blows nobody any good." Only selfish- 



62 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

ness can forget that there are people who live be- 
yond the hill, and that our inconvenience may be 
their advantage. 

Even in our prayers we need to remember that 
what we desire may come to us only at the loss or 
the harming of another. Thus we are trained to 
temper our cravings and moderate our asking for 
ourselves. One writes : 

" What sorrow we should beckon unawares, 

What stinging-nettles in our path would grow, 
If God should answer all our thoughtless prayers, 
Or bring to harvest the poor seed we sow ! 

" The storm for which you prayed, whose kindly shock 
Revived your fields and blessed the fainting air, 
Drove a strong ship upon the cruel rock, 
And one I loved went down in shipwreck there. 

" I ask for sunshine on my grapes to-day, 

You plead for rain to kiss your drooping flowers ; 
And thus within God's patient hand we lay 
These intricate cross-purposes of ours. 

" I greeted with cold grace and doubting fears 
The guest who proved an angel at my side, 
And I have shed more bitter, burning tears 
Because of hopes fulfilled than prayers denied. 

" Then be not clamorous, O restless soul ! 
But hold thy trust in God's eternal plan : 
He views our life's dull weaving as a whole ; 
Only its tangled threads are seen by man. 



COMPENSATION IN LIFE. 63 

"Dear Lord, vain repetitions are not meet 

When we would bring our messages to thee ; 
Help us to lay them at thy dear feet 
In acquiescence, not garrulity." 

There is ground of comfort, therefore, when our 
requests for ourselves are not granted, in the 
thought that blessing may have been given to 
some other one through the denying to us of our 
wishes. This ought to be to us an answer, for we 
are to love our neighbor as ourself. 

But usually the compensation lies nearer home. 
The poor boy who has to work hard, and who lacks 
the comforts and the good times that are enjoyed by 
the rich man's son, finds balancing good in the 
rugged health, the habits of industry and the 
manliness and self-reliance that are the fruit of 
his daily toils, tasks and hardships. The man 
who labors all the day and is weary at nightfall 
has compensation in his relish for food and in the 
sweetness of his sleep. The poor man may have 
fewer comforts and greater privations, but he has 
none of the rich man's anxieties and cares. Low- 
ly places in life may be less conspicuous and there 
may be smaller honor attached to them, but there 
is also less responsibility; for to whom much is 
given, of them also much is required. Besides, 



64 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

content is more likely to dwell in the quiet valley 
than on the mountain-top. 

We may turn the lesson in other ways. If there 
is a steep hill to climb, the toil is repaid by the 
grander and wider view obtained from the summit. 
On the other hand, the quiet, lowly vales may 
seem very commonplace under the shadow of the 
great hills, but they have their own advantages. 
They are sheltered from the storms, and the soil in 
them, receiving the wash from the hills, is richer. 
Getting up toward the stars appears to be promo- 
tion, but it is getting up, also, amid the tempests. 
Advancement brings fresh honor, but it also lays 
upon the shoulders new cares and burdens. One 
night in the darkest period of our American civil 
war President Lincoln and a friend were standing 
at a window in the White House looking out at the 
driving storm. The friend made some remark con- 
cerning the sufferings of the soldiers in the camps 
on such a night. The President replied that there 
was not a soldier in any of the camps with whom 
he would not gladly exchange places. 

In personal experiences the same balancing is 
found. Pain is hard to endure, but it has also its 
compensation, unless by our own impatience and un- 
belief we rob ourselves of the comfort which God 



COMPENSATION IN LIFE. 65 

always sends with it and in it. Pain is meant to 
purify and whiten. Those who wear the radiant 
garments in glory are they who have come up out 
of great tribulation. Thousands of sufferers have 
learned their richest and best life-lessons in sore 
trials. The fires are hot, but holiness comes out of 
the flames. The pruning is sharp and cuts to the 
heart, but more and better fruit is the result after- 
ward. The earthly loss is sore, but there is rich 
spiritual gain that comes from it. On the briery 
rod lovely roses grow, and many of the sweetest 
blessings of life are gathered from amid grief's 
sharp thorns. An old poet wrote in quaint 
phrase : 

" Venomous thorns, that are so sharp and keen, 
Bear flowers, we see, full fresh and fair of hue ; 

Poison is also put in medicine, 

And unto man his health doth oft renew. 

The fire that all things eke consumeth clean 
May hurt and heal ; then if that this be true, 

I trust some time my harm may be my health, 

Since every woe is joined with some wealth." 

Sorrow comes, and sorrow is always bitter and 
hard to endure, but divine comfort comes with it, 
unless in our blindness we thrust the blessed angel 
from our door. It was the Master himself who 
said, " Blessed are they that mourn : for they shall 



66 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

be comforted." This beatitude can mean only that 
God's comfort is so rich an experience, so great a 
blessing, to those who receive it that it is well 
worth our while to mourn that we may get the 
comfort. Those who do not mourn, therefore, lose 
one of the richest, sweetest beatitudes of divine love. 
Night draws down over us with its darkness, and 
we dread its coming ; but when it deepens above our 
heads and day fades out of the sky, ten thousand 
stars flash out. The glorious stars are rich com- 
pensation for the darkness. So it is when the night 
of sorrow approaches. We shudder at its coming 
on, but we pass into its shadows, and heavenly 
comforts which we had not seen before appear 
glowing in silvery splendor above our heads. In 
the bright summer days clouds gather and blot out 
the blue of the sky and fill the air with ominous 
gloom and with fierce lightnings and terrific thun- 
der-peals, but out of the clouds rain pours down to 
refresh the thirsty earth and to give new life to the 
flowers and the plants. So it is, also, with the 
clouds of trial whose black folds ofttimes gather 
above us in our fair summer days of gladness : 
there is rich compensation in the blessings the 
heavy clouds bear to our lives. 

There is a class of people in every community 



COMPENSATION IN LIFE. 67 

who have bodily imperfections or maimings of 
some kind which ofttiines seem to be sore mis- 
fortunes. Sometimes it is lameness that prevents 
a man from joining in life's swift race with his 
fellows, or it is blindness which shuts out the 
glories of day and dooms a man to walk in dark- 
ness, or it is some bodily deformity which mars 
the beauty of the human form ; or it may be only 
confirmed physical feebleness which makes one a 
lifelong invalid. 

Is there any compensation for these misfortunes ? 
No doubt there are possible compensations in every 
case. Byron with his hideous clubbed foot had a 
marvelous genius. It is well known that blind- 
ness is almost invariably alleviated by the wonder- 
ful acuteness of the other senses. The late Mr. 
Fawcett of England said once to a company of 
blind people, " Those only know who have felt it 
by their own experience the wonderful compensa- 
tory forces which nature supplies. Although I 
should be the last to underrate what is lost by 
those who cannot see with their eyes all the count- 
less beauties of color and of form, the landscape 
bright with sunshine or silvered over in the moon- 
light calm, yet, in some manner too subtle for me 
to attempt to analyze, the mental effect of associa- 



68 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

tion is so great that I find that the greatest pleasure 
can be derived from scenes I cannot see. If I am 
out walking or riding, I should feel it a distinct 
loss if I were not told that there was a beautiful 
sunset. A great poet has said : 

' There is a budding morrow in midnight, 
There is a triple sight in blindness keen/" 

No doubt every misfortune brings within reach 
some compensating advantage, although it may not 
always be possible to tell what it is. There is in 
every case at least the compensation of human love 
and sympathy. Dr. J. G. Holland has well said, 
" The mother of a poor misshapen idiotic boy will, 
though she have half a score of bright and beau- 
tiful children besides, entertain for him a peculiar 
affection. He may not be able in his feeble-minded- 
ness to appreciate it, but her heart brims with ten- 
derness for him ; and if he be a sufferer, the softest 
pillow and the tenderest nursing will be his. A 
love will be bestowed upon him which gold could 
not buy, and which no beauty of person and no 
brilliancy of natural gifts could possibly awaken. 
It is thus with every case of defect or eccentricity 
of person. So sure as the mother of a child sees 
in that child's person any reason for the world to 



COMPENSATION IN LIFE. 69 

regard it with contempt or aversion, does she treat 
it with peculiar tenderness, as if she were commis- 
sioned by God — as, indeed, she is — to make up to 
it in the best coinage that which the world will 
certainly neglect to bestow." 

The practical value of this study lies in the di- 
rection of contentment. Whatever may be our 
circumstances, there is in them a nice balancing 
of advantages and disadvantages which ought to 
keep us on the one hand from elation or pride, and 
on the other from undue depression or dishearten- 
ment. We need not envy those whose lot seems 
better than our own ; for if we knew all their life, 
we should find amid the prosperities some drawback 
that in discomfort fully counterbalances that which 
seems to us so attractive and enviable. We ought 
not to grieve over the hardness or the trial in our 
own lot, for, whatever it is, it has some compensa- 
tion that makes it a real — or, certainly, a possible — 
blessing. 

So we get here a lesson of peace. Not acci- 
dental are the events which befall us or the circum- 
stances by which our lives are borne along ; all are 
directed by the hand of divine wisdom and love, 
and the good and the ill are so balanced that " all 
things work together for good to them that love 



70 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

God." Every ill carries in its bosom a compen- 
sating good ; every dark cloud has its lining of 
silver. 

"Ah! if we knew it all, we should surely understand 
That the balance of sorrow and joy is held with an even 

hand, 
That the scale of success or loss shall never overflow, 
And that compensation is twined with the lot of high 

and low." 

Thus, from whatever side we look at life, we 
find this law of compensation. Toil is hard, but 
toiling knits the thews of strength and toughens 
the fibres. Burdens are heavy, but life grows into 
calm power under the weight. Crosses bring pain, 
but they lift men up nearer to God. Duty is ex- 
acting and allows no rest, but faithfulness brings its 
blessed reward. There is no loss but wrapped up 
in it is a seed of gain ; there is no darkness but has 
its lamp shining somewhere in its very midst to 
illumine it. 

"No chilly snow but safe below 
A million buds are sleeping, 
No wintry days but fair spring rays 
Are swiftly onward sweeping. 

"No note of sorrow but shall melt 
In sweetest chord unguessed; 
No labor all too pressing felt 
But ends in quiet rest." 






COMPENSATION IN LIFE. 71 

Can it be but blind chance that produces all this 
marvelous result ? Can it be only nature's work- 
ing that so adjusts all the ten thousand wheels of 
life's intricate machinery that in their motions they 
evolve only harmonies in the end? Could any 
mere chance so set a good opposite every ill, a 
comfort over against every sorrow, a blessing to 
offset every trial ? It would be no less incredible 
a thing if one were to assert that once a printer 
flung down a font of types and the letters accident- 
ally so arranged themselves as to produce in perfect 
lines, paragraphs and pages the Gospel of St. John. 



VII. 

THE COST OF BEING A BLESSING. 

"Say not, °Twas all in vain — 

The anguish and the darkness and the strife : 
Love thrown upon the waters comes again." 

Anna Shipton. 

"Others shall 
Take patience, labor, to their heart and hand 
From thy hand and thy heart and thy brave cheer, 
And God's grace fructify through thee to all." 

E. B. Browning. 

/~\UR preachers sometimes tell us, in urging us to 
^ live a useful life, that it costs but little to do 
good. In a sense this is true. Without large out- 
lay of money and without great expenditure of 
strength one may do many helpful things and make 
one's life a rich blessing in the world; yet there is 
a deeper sense in which one cannot be a true 
blessing in this world save at much cost. 

" What had she done V- asks one, in referring to 
a life which had filled a home with benedictions. 
"Absolutely nothing; but radiant smiles, beaming 
good-humor, the tact of divining what every one 

72 



THE COST OF BEING A BLESSING, 73 

felt and every one wanted, told that she had got out 
of self and learned to think of others ; so that at 
one time it showed itself in deprecating by sweet 
words the quarrel which lowering brows and raised 
tones already showed to be impending ; at another, 
by soothing an invalid's pillow; at another, by 
soothing a sobbing child ; at another, by humoring 
and softening a father who had returned weary and 
ill-tempered from the irritating cares of business. 
None but she saw those things ; none but a loving 
heart could see them. That was the secret of her 
heavenly power. The one who will be found in 
trial capable of great acts of love is ever the one 
who is always doing considerate small ones." 

Such ministries seem to cost nothing : they flow 
from lip and hand and heart quietly and naturally 
as if no effort were required to perform them. Yet 
the least of them is the fruit of self-denial and 
sacrifice. They cost heart's blood. No real good 
or blessing of any kind do we ever get that has not 
cost some other one a pang or a tear. Nor can we 
in our turn do good to others without cost. The 
life that is to be a beneficent one cannot be one o_f 
ease and selfish enjoyment. Even a grain of wheat 
must fall into the ground and die before it can 
yield any harvest. To become useful and helpful 



74 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

we must die to self and to personal ambitions and 
longings : " He that loveth his life shall lose it ; 
and he that hateth his life in this world shall 
keep it unto life eternal." 

We may have our choice. We may live for self, 
taking good care of our lives, not exposing them to 
danger, not making personal sacrifices, having a 
keen eye always for our own interests and advance- 
ment. By this plan of life we may come to old age 
hale and with our strength unabated. People may 
congratulate us on our well-preserved state, and we 
may have considerable pride in the outcome of our 
prudence and carefulness. There certainly seems 
to be something quite pleasant and attractive in such 
a life, yet really it is only the grain of wheat re- 
maining safe and dry in the garner and kept from 
falling into the earth. It is well preserved, but 
there is no harvest from it. The life abides by 
itself alone, well enough kept, but with no in- 
crease. It has been no blessing to the world. It 
has wrought no ministry of love. 

But there is another way to live. It is altogether 
to forget self — not to think of nor care for one's 
own life, but to throw it away in obedience to God 
and in the service of others. People will say we 
are foolish thus to waste our golden life, to wear 



THE COST OF BEING A BLESSING. 75 

ourselves out in toils that bring us no return, to 
make sacrifices for others who are not worthy. 
They sought to hold Jesus back from his cross. 
They said his life was too precious to be wasted in 
such a way — that it ought to be kept for crowning 
and for reigning among men. But we understand 
now that Jesus made no mistake when he chose the 
way of sacrifice. The grain of wheat let fall into 
the ground has yielded a most glorious harvest. 
Jesus has never been sorry for the choice he made ; 
he has never regretted Calvary. 

The heart of the lesson is, that we cannot be 
blessings in this world and at the same time take 
good care of our own lives. That which has cost 
us nothing is worth nothing to others. This prin- 
ciple applies in every life and in all spheres. All 
along the ages whatever is good and beautiful and 
worthy has been the fruit of suffering and pain. 
Civilization has advanced through wars, revolutions 
and failures, through the ruin, decay and overturn- 
ing of empires and kingdoms. Every thoughtful 
reader of the world's history understands this. 
What Christian civilization is to-day it is as the 
harvest of long, sad centuries of weary struggle, 
toil and oppression. Earth's thrones of power are 
built on the wreck of hopes that have been crushed. 



76 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

Every advance worth recording has been made 
through carnage and disaster. It seems that with- 
out shedding of blood there is not only no remission 
of sin, but no progress in life, no growth. Heaven's 
victorious throngs wearing white robes and waving 
branches of palm come up out of great tribulation. 
Even Jesus appears in glory as a Lamb that has 
been slain; his blessedness and his saving power 
are the fruit of suffering and wounding to death. 
We know, too, that all the joys and honors of re- 
demption come from the Saviour's cross, and that 
personal holiness can be reached only through 
struggle, conflict and the crucifixion of self. Thus 
whatever is good in earth and in heaven is the 
outcome of pain, sacrifice and death. 

This law of the cost of whatever is best — even of all 
that is truly useful — in life finds illustration at every 
point. We cannot live a day but something must die 
to be food for the sustaining of our life. We cannot 
be warmed in winter but some miner must crouch 
and toil in darkness to provide fuel for our fires. 
We cannot be clothed but worms must weave their 
own lives into silk threads or sheep must shiver in 
the chill air that their fleeces may cover us. The 
gems and the jewels which the women wear, and 
which they prize so highly, are brought to them 



THE COST OF BEING A BLESSING. 77 

through the anguish and the peril of the poor 
wretches that hunt and dive for them, and the furs 
that we wrap about us in winter cost the lives of 
the creatures which first wore theni, and which 
have to die to provide the warmth and the comfort 
for us. The child lives through the mother's pangs 
and anguish. We cannot even pray but pierced 
hands must be reached down to lift up to heaven 
our sighs and cries, and then held up in continual 
intercession to press our pleas before God. Divine 
mercy can come to us only through the blood of 
the Lamb. 

It is doubtful whether in the realm of spiritual 
influence any blessing of real value ever comes to 
us from another which has not received its baptism 
of pains and tears. That which has cost nothing 
in the heart of him who gives it is not likely to be 
of great use to him who receives it. The true 
poets must always learn in suffering what they 
teach in song. The life-story told in the following 
lines is not exceptional : 

" The poet dipped his pen and drew 

His vivid pictures phrase by phrase — 

Of skies and misty mountains blue, 
Of starry nights and shimmering days. 

Men said, ' He breedeth fancies pure ; 

His touch is facile, swift and sure.' 



78 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

" The poet's friend was stricken sore ; 
In tender tears the pen he dipped, 
And breathed his gentle sorrow o'er, 
And traced the sympathetic script. 
Men said, ' His heart is kind and true ; 
The laurel yet shall be his due.' 

" The poet's child has waxen hands 

That hold Death's heavy-scented rose ; 
She drifts to the dim shadow-lands, 
And draws his wild soul as she goes. 
* * * * * 

He dipped his pen in his heart's wound, 
And sobbing wrote, and thus was crowned." 

The story of all the world's best thoughts is the 
same. The things in men's writings that really 
and deeply help us they have learned in pain and 
anguish, in sore mental conflicts or in suffering. 
The words of the preacher, however eloquently 
and fluently uttered, which he has not himself 
been taught in experiences of struggle, may please 
the ear and charm the fancy, but they do not greatly 
help or bless others. We all know that the most 
effective oratory is not that which flows without 
effort from the lips of the speaker, but that which 
in the knit brow, the glowing eye and the trem- 
bling voice tells of strong feeling and of cost of 
life. All great thoughts are the fruit of deep 
pondering, and ofttimes of suffering and struggle. 



THE COST OF BEING A BLESSING. 79 

" Wherever a great thought is born/' said one who 
knew by bitter experience, " there always is Geth- 
semane." 

An English preacher wrote to one who had 
thanked him for help received from his sermons : 
" That a ministry in which words and truth — if 
truth come, wrung out of mental pain and inward 
struggle — should now and then touch a correspond- 
ing chord in minds with which, from invincible 
and almost incredible shyness, I rarely come in 
personal contact, is not so surprising; for I sup- 
pose the grand principle is the universal one : we 
can heal one another only with blood." He meant 
that the lessons alone which have cost us pain, 
which we have learned in struggle, which have 
been born out of anguish of heart, will heal and 
really bless others. It is only when we have pass- 
ed through the bitterness of temptation, wrestling 
with evil and sore beset ourselves, victorious only 
through the grace of Christ, that we are ready to 
be helpers of others in temptation. It is only 
when we have known sorrow, when the chords 
of our love have been swept by it and when we 
have been comforted by divine grace and helped to 
endure, that we are fitted to become comforters of 
others in their sorrow. 



80 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

This law prevails, therefore, in all life. We yield 
blessing only through dying. There is a Chinese 
legend of a potter who sought for years and years 
to put a certain tint on the vases he made, but all 
his efforts failed. At last, discouraged and in de- 
spair, he threw himself into his furnace, and his 
body was consumed in the fire ; then when the vases 
were taken out, they bore the exquisite color he had 
striven so long in vain to produce. The legend 
illustrates the truth that we can do our noblest and 
best work only at cost of self. The alabaster box 
must be broken before its odors can flow out. 
Christ lifted up and saved the world, not by an 
easy, pleasant, successful life in it, but by suffering 
and dying in it and for it. And we can never bless 
the world merely by having a good time in it, but 
only by giving our lives for it. 

Work for others that costs nothing is scarcely 
worth doing. At least, it takes heart's blood to 
heal hearts. Too many of us are ready to work 
for Christ and do good to our fellow-men only so 
long as it is easy and requires no sacrifice or self- 
denial; but if we stop there, we stop just where 
our service is likely to become of use. This saving 
of life proves, in the end, the losing of it. It is 
they who sow in tears who shall reap in joy. It is 



THE COST OF BEING A BLESSING. 81 

he that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious 
seed, that shall come again with rejoicing, bringing 
his sheaves with him. We may take easy work if 
we will — work that costs us nothing, that involves 
no pain or self-denial — but we must not then be 
surprised if our hands are empty in the great 
harvest-time. 



VIII. 

LIFE AS A LADDER. 

" Beauty and truth, and all that these contain, 
Drop not like ripened fruit about our feet : 
We climb to them through years of sweat and pain." 

J~T was a good while ago that a young man sleep- 
-^ ing one night in the open air in a very desolate 
place had a wonderful vision of a ladder which 
started close beside him and sprang up into the 
very glory of heaven. The vision was meant to 
show him in heavenly picture what were his life's 
possibilities. The way lay open clear up to God ; 
he could have communication with heaven now 
and always. Then the ladder visioned a path 
which his feet might tread, up and up, step by step, 
ever rising higher, until at the last he should be in 
the midst of heaven's glory. 

We may say, too, without any straining of exe- 
gesis, without reading any fanciful interpretations 
into Scripture narrative, that the bright ladder was 
a picture of the Christ. Did not Jesus himself say, 
with this old-time vision in his mind, " Ye shall 

82 



LIFE AS A LADDER. 83 

see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending 
and descending upon the Son of man " ? As down 
to Jacob in his sinfulness came the ladder, so down 
into this lost world came the Saviour. The ladder 
reached from earth to heaven. See a picture of 
Christ's double nature : the Incarnation was the let- 
ting of the ladder down until it touched the lowest 
depths of human need ; at the same time, our Lord's 
divinity reached up into heaven's blue, above the 
tallest mountains, above the shining stars, into the 
midst of the glory of God. 

A ladder is a way for feet to climb ; Christ is 
the way by which the worst sinners may go up out 
of their sins into the purity and blessedness of 
heaven. Homely though the figure of the ladder 
may be, it has many striking and instructive sug- 
gestions. 

The ladder's foot rested on the ground ; our lives 
start on the earth, ofttimes very low down, in the 
common dust. We do not begin our career as 
radiant angels, but as fallen mortals. We are all 
alike in this ; the holiest saints began as sinners. 
He who would go up a ladder must first put his 
foot on the lowest round. We cannot start in 
Christian life at the top, but must begin at the 
bottom and climb up. He who would become a 



84 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

great scholar must first hold in his hand and dili- 
gently con the primer and the spelling-book; he 
who would rise to Christlikeness must begin with 
the simplest duties and obediences. 

This ladder did not lie along the level plain, but 
rose upward until its top rested at the feet of God. 
Thus the path of every true life leads upward and 
ends in heaven. It is thus that the Scriptures al- 
ways paint the way of Christian faith. " Whom he 
did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be con- 
formed to the image of his Son." In God's first 
purpose of salvation for a sinner he has in mind 
the sinner's final transformation into the likeness of 
Christ. " It doth not yet appear what we shall be : 
but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall 
be like him." Whatever mystery may lie about 
the future state, this one thing is clear and sure — 
that every one who believes on Christ shall dwell 
with him and shall bear his image. The ladder of 
faith leads upward into the heavenly glory. 

A ladder is climbed step by step ; no one leaps to 
the top. No one rises to sainthood at a bound ; 
slowly, step by step, we must rise in the heaven- 
ward way. No one gets the victory once for all 
over his sins and his faults. It is a struggle of 
long years, of the whole of life, and every day 



LIFE AS A LADDER. 85 

must have its own victories if we are ever to be 
crowned. Many people are discouraged because 
they seem never to get any nearer the end of their 
struggle ; it is just as hard to be good and true this 
year as it was last year. This vision of life as a 
ladder shows that we may not expect to get beyond 
conflict and effort until our feet stand in heaven. 
A ladder is never easy to ascend ; it is always toil- 
some work to go up its rounds. Kailroad-tracks 
suggest speed and ease, but a ladder suggests slow 
and painful progress. We rise upward in spiritual 
life, not at railway speed, nor even at the racer's 
rate of progress, but slowly, as men go up a 
ladder. 

Yet we may turn the lesson the other way : men 
do not fly up ladders, yet they go up step by step, 
continually rising. We certainly ought always to 
be making some progress in Christian life as the 
years go on. Each day should show at least a little 
advance in holiness, some new conquest over the 
evil that is in us, some wrong habit or some beset- 
ting sin gotten a little more under our feet. We 
ought always to be climbing upward, though it be 
but slowly. We ought never to stand still on the 
ladder. 

The figure suggests, again, that we must do the 



86 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

climbing ourselves. A ladder does not carry any- 
one up : it is but a way of ascent provided for one 
who is willing to climb. God has made a way of 
salvation for us, but we must go in the way. He 
has let down the ladder and it springs from our 
feet up to the foot of heaven's throne, but we must 
climb its rounds ; God will never carry us up. He 
helps us on the way — there were angels on the radi- 
ant stairway of Jacob — but we can never get upward 
one step without our own exertion. We are bidden 
to work out our own salvation, although we are as- 
sured that God works in us both to will and to do. 
He puts the good desires and impulses in our hearts, 
and then gives us the grace to work them out in life. 
It is God that cleanses us, but we must wash in the 
cleansing stream ; God bears us to heaven, but our 
feet must do the climbing. Dr. J. G. Holland's 
lines are suggestive: 

" Heaven is not reached by a single bound, 
But we build the ladder by which we rise 
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, 
And we mount to its summit round by round. 

" We rise by the things that are under our feet — 
By what we have mastered of good or gain, 
By the pride deposed and the passion slain, 
And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet." 



LIFE AS A LADDER. 87 

Every true life should thus be a perpetual climbing 
upward. We should put our faults under our feet 
and make them steps on which to lift ourselves 
daily a little higher. Longfellow in his " Ladder 
of St. Augustine " puts this thought in a striking 
way: 

" St. Augustine ! well hast thou said 
That of our vices we can frame 
A ladder, if we will but tread 

Beneath our feet each deed of shame. 

" All common things, each day's events 
That with the hour begin and end, 
Our pleasures and our discontents, 
Are rounds by which we may ascend. 

* * * * * 

" Standing on what too long we bore 

With shoulders bent and downcast eyes, 
We may discern — unseen before — 
A path to higher destinies ; 

" Nor deem the irrevocable past 
As wholly wasted, wholly vain, 
If, rising on its wrecks, at last 
To something nobler we attain." 

We have here the key to all growth of charac- 
ter. We can rise only by continual self-conquests. 
We must make stepping-stones of our dead selves. 
Every fault we overcome lifts us a little higher. 
All low desires, all bad habits, all longings for ig- 



88 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

noble things, that we vanquish and trample down, 
become ladder-rounds on w T hich we climb upward 
out of earthliness and sinfulness into purer and 
Christlier being. There really is no other way by 
which we can rise upward. If we are not living 
victoriously these little common days, we surely are 
not making any progress. Only those who climb 
are mounting toward the stars. Heaven itself at 
last, and the heavenly life here on the earth, are 
for those only who overcome. 

There is another suggestion in the figure : the 
ladder which began on the earth and pressed up- 
ward step by step reached to the very feet of God. 
It did not come to an end at the top of one of 
earth's high mountains. God's way of salvation 
is not partial, does not leave any climber halfway 
to glory, but conducts every true believer to the 
gates of pearl. The true Christian life is persistent 
and persevering ; it endures unto the end. But we 
must notice that it is ladder all the way; it never 
becomes a plain, smooth, flower-lined or descending 
path. So loug as we stay in this world we shall 
have to keep on climbing slowly, painfully, up- 
ward. A really true and earnest Christian life 
never gets very easy ; the easy way of life does not 
lead upward. If we want just to have a good, pleas- 



LIFE AS A LADDER. 89 

ant time in this world, we may have it, but there will 
be no progress in it. It may be less difficult to live 
right after one has been living thus for a time, but 
the ladder never becomes a bit of level grass-sward. 
Every step of the heavenly way is uphill, and steep 
at that. Heaven always keeps above us, no matter 
how far we climb toward it. We never in this 
world get to a point where we may regard ourselves 
as having reached life's goal, as having attained the 
loftiest height within our reach ; there are always 
other rounds of the ladder to climb. The noblest 
life ever lived on earth but began here its growth 
and attainment. Mozart, just before his death, said, 
" Now I begin to see what might be done in music." 
That is all the saintliest man ever learns in this 
world about living: he just begins to see what 
might be done in living. It is a comfort to know 
that that really is the whole of our earthly mission 
— just to learn how to live, and that the true living 
is to be beyond this world. 

This wonderful vision-ladder was radiant with 
angels ; we are not alone in our toilsome climbing. 
We have the companionship and ministry of strong 
friends whom we have never seen. Besides, the 
going up and coming down of these celestial mes- 
sengers told of communication never interrupted 



90 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

between God and those who are climbing up the 
steep way. There is never a moment nor any ex- 
perience in the life of a true Christian from which 
a message may not instantly be sent up to God, and 
back to which help may not instantly come. God 
is not off in heaven merely, at the top of the long, 
steep life-ladder, looking down upon us as we strug- 
gle upward in pain and tears. As we listen we 
hear him speak to the sad, weary man who lies 
there at the foot of the stairway, and he says, " Be- 
hold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all 
places whither thou goest ; . . . I will not leave 
thee." Not angel companionship alone, precious as 
that is, is promised, but divine companionship also, 
every step of the toilsome way until we get home. 
It is never impossible, therefore, for any one to 
mount the ladder to the very summit ; with God's 
strong, loving help, the weakest need never faint 
nor fail. 



IX. 

SEEDS OF LIGHT. 

" ' Wouldst thou/ so the helmsman answered, 
6 Learn the secret of the sea ? 
Only those who brave its dangers 
Comprehend its mystery.' " 

Longfellow. 

" For meek obedience, too, is light, 

And following that is finding Him." 

Lowell. 

rTlHE figure of the seed is very common in the 
"** Scriptures. All natural life begins in germs 
and develops into fullness of form and strength. 
The same law prevails in the spiritual world. The 
kingdom of heaven begins in a heart as a very little 
seed and grows until it fills all the life. Every 
word of God is a seed which encloses a living germ ; 
plant it in the soil of faith and prayer, and it will 
grow. 

There is one passage, however, in which the fig- 
ure of the seed is very striking : " Light is sown 
for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in 
heart." " Light " stands for all spiritual blessing, 

91 



92 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

and the thought is that our blessings are sown for 
us just as wheat-grains and flower-seeds are sow T n, 
and that we gather the harvest from this sowing as 
we pluek flowers from garden or wildwood or reap 
the wheat from the fields. God gives us our bless- 
ings not full-formed, but as seeds. 

We may think of the divine sowing of the light 
we are now harvesting. We may say that before 
the world began God sowed seeds of light in his 
thoughts and purposes of redemption. There are 
trees on the earth which are many centuries old; 
one who sits in their shadow is lost in thought as 
he tries to think of the day when the seeds were 
dropped from w r hich these ancient trees sprang. 
But the blessings of divine life in whose shade we 
sit these days in our homes and sanctuaries are 
older than the hoary mountains ; they were thoughts 
and purposes of love in the heart of God in the im- 
measurable past, and are but growing to ripeness in 
these later days. 

Then we may say that our blessed Lord sowed 
seeds of light for us in his incarnation, in his obe- 
dience, in his sufferings and in his atoning death. 
The tears that fell at Bethany and again on Olive's 
brow, the blood-drops of anguish that stained the 
dewy grass in Gethsemaue and those other life- 



SEEDS OF LIGHT. 93 

drops that trickled down from the cross on Gol- 
gotha, — these were all seeds of light sown to yield 
peace, joy, comfort and life to human souls along 
these centuries of Christian faith. Who can ever 
count up the blessings that the world has reaped 
from Christ's sowing? 

Then we may say that God has sown light for 
us in his holy promises. All divine words are 
seeds ; wherever they fall, beauty springs up. 
Deserts are made to blossom as the rose wherever 
the sower goes forth to sow. The promises were 
spoken ages since and put down in the inspired 
book and have been preserved, and now in these 
late times they bring cheer and hope to weary men 
who without them would perish in the darkness. 

But there are more practical uses of the figure. 
A seed is a germ. When, therefore, we say that 
God has sown the light for us, we mean that he 
gives us our blessings in germ, not in full form — 
that they come to us, not developed into complete- 
ness of beauty, but as seeds which we must plant, 
waiting, sometimes waiting long, for them to grow 
into loveliness. A seed does not disclose all the 
beauty of the life that is folded up within it. We 
see only a little brown and unsightly hull which 
gives no prophecy of anything so beautiful as 



94 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

springs from it when it has been planted. These 
facts in nature have their analogies in the seeds of 
spiritual blessing which God sows for us. The 
blessing does not appear ; what does appear is often 
unlovely in its form, giving in itself no promise of 
good. Yet it is a seed carrying in it the potency of 
life and the possibilities of great blessing. 

For example, every duty that comes to our hand 
in the common days is a seed of light which God 
has sown for us. Some seeds are dark and rough 
as we look upon them; so there are duties that 
have in them no promise of joy or pleasure as they 
first present themselves to us. They look hard and 
repulsive, and we shrink from doing them, but 
every one knows that there is in the faithful doing 
of every duty a strange secret of joy; and the 
harder the duty, the fuller and the richer is the 
sense of gladness that follows its performance. 



" God's angels drop like grains of gold 
Our duties 'midst life's shining sands, 
And from them, one by one, we mould 

Our own bright crown with patient hands. 
From dust and dross we gather them ; 
We toil and stoop for love's sweet sake 
To find each worthy act a gem 
In glory's kingly diadem 
Which we may daily richer make." 



SEEDS OF LIGHT. 95 

Thus every duty is a seed of light. To evade it 
or to neglect it is to miss a blessing ; to do it is to 
have the seed burst into beauty in the heart of the 
doer. We need to learn the lesson. We are con- 
tinually coming up to stern and severe things in 
our life's path, and ofttimes we are tempted to de- 
cline doing them because they appear hard and 
costly. If we yield to such temptations, we shall 
reap no joy from God's sowing of light for us ; but 
if we take up the hard task, whatever it is, and do 
it, we shall always find blessing. 

One of our Lord's own words will help us here. 
When, at the well of Jacob, his disciples pressed 
him to eat, knowing that a little while before he 
had been weary and hungry, his answer was, " I 
have meat to eat that ye know not of." — " Hath 
any man brought him aught to eat?" they inquired. 
Then Jesus answered, " My meat is to do the will 
of Him that sent me, and to finish his work." 
That is, he took up the duties that came to him hour 
by hour, hard as they might be, and in doing them 
found bread for his hunger. These duties, so to 
speak, were like nuts, hard and with rough, prickly 
hull, which yet, when broken open, yield delicious 
meat. There is always in every doing of God's 
will a secret gladness that feeds the soul. God's 



96 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

commandments ever enfold seeds of blessing whose 
ripened fruit can never become ours unless we obey 
the divine words. Says the old Hebrew Psalmist, 

" The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul ; 

The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple ; 

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; 

The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the 
eyes ; 

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever ; 

The judgments of the Lord are true, and righteous alto- 
gether. 

More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine 
gold; 

Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. 

Moreover by them is thy servant warned ; 

In keeping of them is there great reward." 

In all these expressions the blessing appears 
wrapped up in the divine will. We must keep 
the law, and it will restore our soul ; we must 
observe the precepts, and they will rejoice our 
heart ; we must obey the commandment, and it 
will enlighten our eyes ; we must eat the honey to 
taste its sweetness; we must keep the statutes to 
get their great reward. Thus God has sown seeds 
of light all along our path, in all the tasks and 
duties of our common days ; if we will be obedient 
always, our lives shall be ever full of blessings. 

The providences that God sends us are likewise 



SEEDS OF LIGHT. 97 

seeds of light. They are seeds of light, for the 
light is not always manifest in them as at first they 
appear to our eyes. Ofttimes they have a dark and 
unattractive aspect ; they come in the form of trials, 
losses, disappointments, pains. 

Here is a lump of black coal which the miner 
brings up from the depths of the earth. He tells 
you to take it into your house and it will fill your 
apartment with light; but you shrink from touch- 
ing it, and say, " Surely there is no light in that ? 
See ! it only blackens my fingers. It can shed no 
beams of light in my room." Yet that lump of 
coal is indeed a seed of light. The man of science 
takes it and puts it in his retort, and your chamber 
is made bright as day by its unimprisoned beams. 

Many of the providences that God sends to us 
are in like manner repulsive in their form. We 
shrink from them. " There surely can be no hid- 
den light in this trial," we say. " There can be no 
concealed gladness in this grief or pain." Yet it 
is just as in the lump of coal : there is a seed of 
light folded up and hidden away in the hard ex- 
perience. There is a word in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews which carries the same thought: "No 
chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, 
but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth 



98 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them 
which are exercised thereby." At first there is 
no fruit, only a seed, and that is dark, unattractive 
— not joyous, but grievous. Then afterward, at the 
time of ripening, the fruit comes, beautiful, luscious 
— the peaceable fruit of righteousness. 

"Within this leaf, to every eye 
So little worth, doth hidden lie 
Most rare and subtile fragrancy. 
Wouldst thou its secret strength unbind? 
Crush it, and thou shalt perfume find 
Sweet as Arabia's spicy wind. 

"In this dull stone, so poor, and bare 
Of shape or lustre, patient care 
Will find for thee a jewel rare ; 
But first must skillful hands essay, 
With file and flint, to clear away 
The film which hides its fire from day. 

"This leaf? this stone? It is thy heart. 
It must be crushed by pain and smart, 
It must be cleansed by sorrow's art, 
Ere it will yield a fragrance sweet, 
Ere it will shine a jewel meet 
To lay before thy dear Lord's feet." 

The lesson is plain : every dark providence that 
comes to us is a seed of light. The light is con- 
cealed in the rough covering; but if we take the 
seed and plant it in the furrow gashed in our heart 



SEEDS OF LIGHT. 99 

by the pain, it will in due time yield its blessed 
fruit of light. It requires time to get the plant 
of beauty from the seed ; the seed must lie in the 
ground and die that the living germ enfolded in the 
husk may shoot up. So we have to wait a while 
— sometimes a long while — to get the blessing out 
of the sorrow or the pain that God gives to us. 
We must give the seed time to grow. Yet we need 
faith and patience to get the rich blessing. Not to 
be able to accept the bitterness of the seed is to miss 
the sweetness of the ripened fruit. No doubt many 
persons fail of the highest and best blessings of life 
because they cannot take the pain or the severity in 
which the blessings are w r rapped. 

Every cross which we are called to take up is 
also a seed of light. We are strongly tempted in 
these luxurious days to seek out for ourselves easy 
ways of life and to evade those that are hard. 
Naturally, we do not like to bear heavy burdens, 
to perform difficult tasks, to make self-denials and 
sacrifices. We prefer to be indolent. Not many 
people die of overwork; far more die of ennui. 
Souls as well as bodies are withered and shriveled 
by self-indulgence. 

When we are having great worldly prosperity, 
getting on easily, without much trial or struggle, 



100 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

we think we are enjoying God's special favor and 
are being peculiarly blessed by him; but when 
times get harder, when there is more conflict, when 
there are fewer pleasant things, we think we are 
not having so much divine favor as formerly. 
But we are wrong in inferring this. It is a mis- 
taken thought that God sows life's best blessings 
thickest amid the flowers of earth's gardens ; really, 
they lie most plentifully on the bare fields of toil 
and hardship. Luxury has not in it half so many 
germs and possibilities of real good as are found 
along the sterner paths of life. The poor man's 
boy envies the rich man's son because the latter 
does not need to do anything or to exert himself to 
get started in life ; the poor boy wishes his lot were 
the same, and laments the hardness of the circum- 
stances in which he is doomed to toil and struggle. 
The angel that bends over the boy's head in guar- 
dian care sees the seeds of a great harvest of bless- 
ing in the very things the boy bewails as discour- 
agements and hardnesses. The need for exertion, 
self-denial and endurance, for doing without many 
things which he craves, and working early and late 
to get the bare necessities of existence, builds up in 
him a strong, self-reliant manhood. Idleness any- 
where and always is a curse and brings a curse 



SEEDS OF LIGHT. 101 

upon itself, while work anywhere and always is a 
blessing and brings blessing upon itself. 

"Get leave to work 
In this world : 'tis the best you get at all : 
For God, in cursing, gives us better gifts 
Than man in benediction. God says, ' Sweat 
For foreheads ;' men say, ' Crowns ;' and so we are crowned — ■ 
Ay, gashed by some tormenting circle of steel 
Which snaps with a secret spring. Get work ! get work ! 
Be sure His better than what you work to get." 

Of course toil and hardship are not easy, nor is 
it easy to take up the cross and carry it ; but if we 
are wise, it is not ease that we are seeking, but 
good — growth, blessing, character, more life. It 
was not easy for Jesus to go forward to his cross 
seeing it ever in plain view, yet we remember with 
w T hat horror he looked upon the thought of turning 
away from it when a disciple sought to dissuade him 
from going on to meet it. We are told, also, that 
he endured the cross, despising the shame, for the 
joy that was set before him. To his eye the cross 
was a seed of light ; the light — what wondrous 
light it was ! — was wrapped up in the black folds. 
He took up the seed of ignominy and shame and 
woe, and out of it burst all the glorious blessings 
of human redemption. 

So it is in all life, in the largest and the humblest 



102 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

and in the smallest and the greatest things : God 
wraps up his best things in dark coverings, in 
husks that repel us by their sharpness and their 
bitterness. The law of all true living is toil, 
endurance, pain, sacrifice. Nothing of much worth 
can be gotten without cost. An easy life has but 
small outcome. We shrink from things that are 
hard, but really all calls to stern and severe duties 
are seeds of light ; they are calls to accept divine 
gifts of inestimable worth. The hard tasks carry 
within themselves germs of good and blessing. 
Crosses blossom into crowns. All calls to self- 
denials are invitations to fuller life, to nobler 
manhood. If we accept them in quiet faith and 
with heroic courage, we shall gather blessings into 
our bosom in the harvest-time. 



" If none were sick and none were sad, 

What service could we render ? 
I think if we were always glad 

We scarcely could be tender. 
Did our beloved never need 

Our patient ministration, 
Earth would grow cold, and miss indeed 

Its sweetest consolation. 
If sorrow never claimed our heart 

And every wish were granted, 
Patience would die and hope depart — 

Life would be disenchanted." 



SEEDS OF LIGHT. 103 

These are illustrations enough to make clear the 
principle. We are coming up to the seeds of light 
continually as we go on over life's hard paths. 
They may not lie like pearls of dew on leaf and 
flower, nor like diamonds blazing out their light ; 
ofttimes they are rough, with prickly burrs which 
it hurts our hands to take up; but afterward, 
when they have had time to grow, the fruit reveals 
itself. Every heavenly impulse obeyed lights in 
our hearts a lamp whose beam at length flames out. 
Every hard duty accepted and performed yields its 
secret of joy ; every sacrifice endured for Christ's 
sake brings its blessing. 

But if we will not accept the rough seeds, we 
never can have the ripe fruit; hence only heroic 
souls can get the best things of life. Easy faith 
receives but small reward ; its timid vessels venture 
not beyond sight of land. Only bold faith dis- 
covers new worlds. Only to those who overcome 
are the Apocalyptic blessings promised. The joys 
of victory none can taste but those who pass 
through the battle. 



X. 

LOOKING AT THE RIGHT SIDE. 

"Now in the sunset glow I stand so near 
The hills of light that all the past grows clear; 
Even griefs, transfigured in this softer ray, 
Take on new forms and shine above my way. 
With dawning triumph in the words I read, 

'He taketh from us nothing that we need.'" 

Frances L. Mace. 

"ITERY much heart-pain is caused by looking at 
" the wrong side of providences. If we could 
only see the strange things of our lives in their 
true light, perplexity would vanish and the dark- 
est experiences would be brightened as night is 
brightened by the shining stars. 

Late on a summer afternoon rain began to fall. 
For half an hour it fell in gentle shower. All the 
while the sky in the low west was cloudless, and the 
sun, near his setting, shone in undimmed radiance. 
Through the falling shower his beams poured, 
making a scene of wonderful beauty. The crys- 
tal raindrops looked like diamonds as the , sun's 
rays touched them, and the whole air seemed full 

104 



LOOKING AT THE BIGHT SIDE. 105 

of brilliant gems. Arching the eastern horizon a 
wondrous rainbow appeared, all its colors dazzling 
in their bright beauty. So it is to the eye of 
Christian faith when the clouds of trial gather 
overhead and the rain falls : it is still clear where 
the Father looks down upon his children. No 
clouds cover his face ; the beams of his love stream 
through the falling shower; every teardrop becomes 
a precious gem and the rainbow of peace glows 
upon the clouds. The Christian needs only to be- 
hold his sorrow in the true light to see it thus trans- 
figured. 

" Be still, sad heart, and cease repining : 
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining. 
Thy fate is the common fate of all : 
Into each life some rain must fall, 
Some days must be dark and dreary." 

One Christmas a friend sent the poet Whittier a 
gentian-flower pressed between two pieces of glass. 
On one side the appearance was without beauty — 
only an indistinct, blurred mass of something held 
beneath the pane — but on the other side the full ex- 
quisite beauty of the flower appeared delicately out- 
lined under the glass. The poet hung the token on 
his window, turning the lovely side inward. Those 
who passed by without, looking up, marked only a 



106 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

" gray disc of clouded glass," seeing no beauty, per- 
chance wondering that the poet would cherish any- 
thing so void of grace ; but he, sitting within, looked 
at the token, and saw outlined against the winter 
sky all the exquisite loveliness of the flower. 

"They cannot from their outlook see 
The perfect grace it has for me; 
For there the flower whose fringes through 
The frosty breath of autumn blew 
Turns from without its face of bloom 
To the warm tropic of my room, 
As fair as when beside its brook 
The hue of bending skies it took. 

"But deeper meanings come to me, 
My half-immortal flower, from thee: 
Man judges from a partial view; 
None ever yet his brother knew. 
The eternal Eye that sees the whole 
May better read the darkened soul, 
And find, to outward sense denied, 
The flower upon its inmost side." 

There is a side of perfect beauty in every provi- 
dence of Christian life, and there is also a side that 
is dark, blurred, or even repellent. To those who 
look at the providence from within, sitting in the 
chamber of faith and peace, it appears in all the 
colors of heaven ; but to those who stand outside, 
in the winter's cold, and look at it, it appears with- 



LOOKING AT THE RIGHT SIDE. 107 

out one line of loveliness. Only those who behold 
God as their Father see the beauty in his provi- 
dences. 

Our Lord in his parable of the Vine and its 
Branches tells us two things which ought to help 
in the interpreting of life's trials. He says that 
the Father is the husbandman, and also that it is 
the fruitful branches, and not the unfruitful, that the 
husbandman prunes. Afflictions are never in them- 
selves joyous or pleasant. We cannot welcome them 
into our lives in the same way that we welcome ex- 
periences of gladness; they always give pain, and 
we cannot enjoy pain. Many of them cut deeply 
and sorely into our lives. Sometimes our best- 
beloved friends are taken away from us, and our 
hearts are left bleeding as a vine bleeds when a 
green branch is cut from it. Sometimes it is loss 
of property or of money that tries us, or it may be 
in sickness or personal suffering that the chastening 
consists. In whatever form it comes, the experi- 
ence is painful. It cannot be otherwise. 

Here it is that Christian faith comes in, putting 
such interpretation and explanation upon the pain- 
ful things that we may be ready to accept them 
with confidence, even with rejoicing. The assur- 
ance which our Lord gives that the Father is the 



108 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

husbandman, if we can but receive it in simplicity, 
at once puts a gracious and loving aspect on what- 
ever sufferings we are called to endure. Our Father 
is the husbandman ; we are branches under his care. 
He watches over our lives. The afflictions which 
cut into our very souls, the taking from us of 
objects that are dear to us, as when the gardener 
with his sharp knife removes luxuriant branches 
from the vine, are our Father's prunings. No 
hand but his ever holds the knife. We are sure, 
then, that there is never any careless cutting, any 
unwise or mistaken pruning, any needless remov- 
ing of rich branches or growths. 

We really need to go no farther than this. A 
strong, abiding confidence that all the trials, sorrows 
and losses of our lives are parts of our Father's 
husbandry ought to silence every question, quiet 
every fear and give peace and restful assurance to 
our hearts in all their pain. We cannot know the 
reason for the painful strokes, but we know that 
He who holds the pruning-knife is our Father. 
That ought always to be enough to know. 

The other thought in the Lord's parable is scarce- 
ly less full of comfort to a Christian. He says it 
is the fruitful branches that the Father prunes : 
" Every branch that beareth fruit he purgeth." 



LOOKING AT THE RIGHT SIDE. 109 

Afflictions are not, then, a mark of God's anger 
or disapproval ; rather, they are a mark of his 
favor. They show that the branches into which 
he cuts, from which he trims away the luxuriant 
growths, are fruit-bearing already. He does not 
prune the fruitless branches : he cuts them off 
altogether as useless, as mere cumberers, absorbing 
life and yielding nothing of blessing or good. 
There is no place in the divine kingdom for useless- 
ness. God may let these barren branches alone for 
a while — they may grow undisturbed even until 
death before they are actually cut off — but the 
Father does not take the trouble to prune them, 
because it would do no good. They are in Christ 
only in appearance, not really, and have no true 
life in them. The wisest and most skillful pruning 
will never make fruitful a lifeless tree or vine. 

Some good Christian people have the impression 
that their many troubles indicate that God does not 
love them — that they cannot be true Christians, or 
they would not be so chastened. This word of 
Christ shows how mistaken they are. The much 
chastening shows that the Father is pruning his 
fruitful branch to make it more fruitful : " Whom 
the Lord loveth he ehasteneth." Long ago the 
writer of one of the Psalms passed through an 



110 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

experience of perplexity when he saw how much 
less trouble men of the world had than he had, 
though he was faithfully trying to serve God. The 
record of his experience is valuable to us: 

" But as for me, my feet were almost gone ; 
My steps had well nigh slipped. 
For I was envious at the arrogant, 
When I saw the prosperity of the wicked. 
For there are no bands in their death ; 
But their strength is firm. 
They are not in trouble as other men ; 
Neither are they plagued like other men." 

But the writer passes on to note the result of this 
absence of trouble or pruning : 

" Therefore, pride is as a chain about their neck ; 
Violence covereth them as a garment. 
Their eyes stand out with fatness : 
They have more than heart could wish, 
They scoff, and in wickedness utter oppression ; 
They speak loftily. 

* * * * * * 

Behold, these are the wicked ; 
And, being alway at ease, they increase in riches." 

Then there rises up before the Psalmist the con- 
trasted picture of his own life, and the question 
flashes, "Does it profit to be good?" 

" Surely in vain have I cleansed my heart, 
And washed my hands in innocency ; 






LOOKING AT THE RIGHT SIDE. Ill 

For all the day long have I been plagued, 
And chastened every morning." 

A little later, however, we hear the solution of 
the strange perplexity : 

" When I thought how I might know this, 
It was too painful for me ; 
Until I went into the sanctuary of God, 
And considered their latter end. 
Surely thou settest them in slippery places ; 
Thou casteth them down to destruction. 
How are they become a desolation in a moment ! 
They are utterly consumed with terrors." 

That one escapes the Father's primings is not, 
therefore, a mark of peculiar divine love and 
favor. It is the fruitless branch that is never 
pruned ; the fruitful branch is pruned, and pruned 
— not by one without skill, not by an enemy, but 
by the wise Father. Thus we see how we may 
even rejoice in our trials and afflictions. They are 
tokens that God loves us — that we are already 
blessed by him in spiritual fruiting — and they 
remind us that it is because God would lead us to 
be yet greater blessings by making us still more 
fruitful that he sends the trials. 

We get from our Lord's parable also another 
word of interpretation ; we learn that our Father 
has a definite object in view in all his prunings : 



112 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

" Every branch that beareth fruit he purgeth [or 
pruneth] it, that it may bring forth more fruit." 
One who was altogether ignorant of the art of prun- 
ing and its purpose, w T ho should see a man with a 
sharp knife cutting off branch after branch of a luxu- 
riant vine, would at first suppose that the pruner was 
ruining the vine. So at the time it seems, but by 
and by it appears that the prunings have made the 
vine more fruitful. In the season of vintage the 
grapes are more luscious, with a richer flavor in 
them, because of the cutting away of the super- 
fluous branches. In like manner, if an angel who 
had never witnessed anything of human suffering, 
and who knew nothing of its object, were to see the 
Father causing pain and affliction to his children, 
it would seem to him that these experiences could be 
only destructive of happiness and blessing ; but if 
the angel were to follow those chastened lives on to 
the end, he would see untold blessing coming out of 
the chastenings. The Father was but pruning the 
branches that they might bear more and better fruit : 

" Now the pruning, sharp, unsparing, 
Scattered blossom, bleeding shoot ; 
Afterward the plenteous bearing 
Of the Master's pleasant fruit." 

In one of his Psalms, David says, " I had fainted, 



LOOKING AT THE RIGHT SIDE. 113 

unless I had believed to see the goodness of the 
Lord, in the land of the living." He had been 
passing through many and sore troubles, and so 
great were his trials that he would have sunk into 
utter darkness and despair but for his faith in a 
goodness which he could not see. Unless he had 
believed to see the goodness he would have been 
overwhelmed. There are many times when we 
can readily discern the divine goodness in our lives 
— it is manifest all about us, in prosperities and 
favors which make us glad — but there come other 
times when the goodness cannot be seen. The 
home circle is broken ; loved ones are taken from 
us ; property melts away ; friends fail ; health is 
shattered. The goodness cannot be seen. 

Then is the time for Christian faith. We should 
believe in the goodness we cannot see. We are 
sure that the goodness is there. God does not send 
us two classes of providences — one good, and one 
evil. All are good. Affliction is God's goodness 
in the seed. It takes time for a seed to grow and 
to develop into fruitfulness. Many of the best 
things of our lives come to us first as pain, suffer- 
ing, earthly loss or disappointment — black seeds, 
without beauty — but afterward they grow into the 
rich fruits of righteousness. 



114 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

God's love toward his children never intermits. 
His will is always mercy and love. Ofttimes there 
is more divine blessing in the things we regard as 
evil than in those we consider good. Pain may be 
better for us to-morrow than pleasure. Loss may 
have for us greater enriching than gain. Sorrow 
may work for us better service than joy in the fash- 
ioning of Christ's image on our hearts. Misfortune, 
as we interpret the experience, may bring us in- 
finitely more blessing than the events we write 
down as fortunate. Our wrecks of earthly hopes 
may be in reality the disclosing to us of rich 
spiritual possessions unseen before. 

In one of our light, thoughtless, superficial words 
we say, " Seeing is believing." But it is not true : 
seeing is not believing. Any one can believe when 
he sees, but a Christian is to believe when he can- 
not see. If not, what is the blessing of faith ? or 
what is the gain of being a child of God ? We 
dishonor our Father if we can believe in his good- 
ness only when we can see goodness written out in 
large letters upon the things he gives. Goodness 
is always wrapped up even in the most painful ex- 
perience our Father sends. We should never lose 
sight of the divine purpose in all trials — to make 
our lives more fruitful. Merely getting through 



LOOKING AT THE RIGHT SIDE. 115 

troubles with quiet acquiescence is not all of true 
Christian endurance : we must seek to get through 
better men and women, with more of the mind and 
spirit of Christ, loving God and men more. We 
must see that the pruning makes us more fruitful — 
that the cutting away of earthly things or of human 
joys sends more of our life to spiritual things, and 
to the bearing of the fruits of righteousness and 
peace. A sorrow that does us no good only harms 
us. 



XI. 

FOR BETTER OR WORSE. 

" O partner of my gladness, wife, what care, what grief, is 
there 
For me you would not bravely face, with me you would not 
share?" 

William Cox Bennett. 

/^NE of the saddest things about life is the waste 
of its blessings. Hearts go hungry while close 
by, within easy reach, lies the bread which would 
satisfy their craving. The fainting fall in the strug- 
gle while close at hand are strong arms which could 
easily support them. Even in the closest relation- 
ships there is ofttimes a pitiful waste of joy and 
help. In many homes where hearts are really full 
of love the individuals fail to relate themselves to 
each other in such a way as to receive one from an- 
other what each yearns to give by sweet ministry. 
There are many marriages that fail to bring the 
wedded lives into that perfect union and communion 
whereby one life shares all its best with the other. 
There are husbands who do not get the help from 

116 



FOR BETTER OR WORSE. 117 

their wives that their wives would love to give. 
They do not take them at all into their deepest, 
most real life. A man shares with his wife the pleas- 
ant things — the encouragements, the successes, the 
triumphs, the joys and prosperities. He talks over 
with her the light, easy things that he is doing. 
But the burdens, the discouragements, the adver- 
sities and the failures he does not tell her of, nor 
does he discuss with her the grave, serious questions 
that cause him perplexity and loss of rest. 

It is not in an unkind or a selfish spirit that he 
withholds from her these trying and painful things ; 
indeed, ofttimes it is the very tenderness of his re- 
gard for his wife that leads him to keep from her 
things that would cause her distress or anxiety of 
mind. He does not suppose that she could help 
him in the solving of the perplexing questions or 
in the bearing of the heavy burdens, and he thinks 
it would be unkindness in him to vex her with the 
questions or oppress her with the burdens. So he 
keeps these troublous things to himself, and oft- 
times while he is in deep anxiety and bowing under 
heavy loads, wellnigh crushed beneath them, she is 
moving along in a path of sunshine, in quiet en- 
joyment, with no shadow of care, wholly uncon- 
scious of her husband's need of strong sympathy 



118 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

and help. Though the prompting of affection and 
of unselfishness in the husband, there is no doubt 
that in ordinary circumstances such a course is both 
wrong and unwise. It is robbing the wife of love's 
privilege of sharing the whole of her husband's 
life. It is treating her as if she were a child un- 
able to understand the husband's affairs or to help 
him carry his load. It is taking from her the deep 
and exquisite joy which every true wife finds in 
suffering with her husband in whatever causes him 
pain or loss. 

It is easy to find illustrations. Quite recently, 
in the case of a heavy business failure, the wife 
knew nothing whatever of the coming misfortune 
until it had actually fallen upon her home, sweep- 
ing all away. She then learned that for more than 
a year her husband had been struggling with his 
load, trying in every way to bring his affairs out 
of their complicated state and to escape the peril 
of bankruptcy. Meanwhile, his wife had been liv- 
ing in her sheltered home, wholly unaware of any 
stress or of any shadow impending. She had been 
spending money as freely as usual in her household 
management, making no effort to be economical, 
since she knew of no necessity for unwonted econ- 
omy. Her neighbors and her neighbors' wives, 



FOB BETTER OB WOBSE. 119 

knowing of her husband's business straits and of 
his almost certain failure in the near future, thought 
it strange that she still maintained her costly scale 
of household expenditure, making no effort what- 
ever to be economical, and severely animadverted 
upon her want of sympathy with her husband in 
his financial distress. Had she known anything of 
the real condition of affairs, she would have in- 
stantly reduced her household outlay to the mini- 
mum, and possibly by doing this she might have 
saved him from failure. Besides, he would have 
had the inspiration of her loving, strengthening 
sympathy in all the struggle, and also the aid of 
her wifely counsel, enabling him to make a more 
heroic, if not a successful, struggle against adverse 
circumstances. 

There is no doubt that in this case the husband's 
motive was unselfish and kindly. He shrank from 
giving anxiety and distress to his wife, and hoped 
to weather the storm without acquainting her with 
the fact that he was in a storm. His motive was 
generous, but his kindness was mistaken. He failed 
to honor her with that full confidence which every 
husband owes to the woman whom he has taken to 
his side as his wife. He inflicted positive injury 
and sore w T rong upon her in allowing her to go on 



120 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

in her expensive style of living, ignorant of the 
stress of his circumstances, thus drawing upon her- 
self the censure of her neighbors. This injustice 
to her was irreparable. Her name will never be 
altogether free from the reproach it gathered in 
those days of her husband's struggles when she 
seemed to be coldly indifferent to his distress. Yet 
for this reproach her husband alone was to blame. 
When a man has taken a woman to be his wife, 
he has linked her life with his own in the closest 
of all earthly relations. Whatever concerns him 
also concerns her. He has no interests which are 
not hers as well as his. He should, therefore, 
make her the sharer of all his life. No remotest 
corner of it should be closed against her. She 
should know of his successes and triumphs and be 
permitted to rejoice with him in his gladness. If 
reverses come, she should know also of these, that 
she may sympathize with him, encourage and help 
him in his struggles and stand close beside him 
when the shadow rests upon him. They have 
linked their lives together " for better or worse," 
and they should share the pains and the trials as 
well as the pleasures and the comforts that come 
to either of them. A true wife is not a child ; she 
is a woman, and should be treated as a woman. 



FOB BETTER OB WO BSE. 121 

There is resistless eloquence in the wife's appeal 
contained in the following lines : 

"Dear, it is twilight — the time of rest; 

Ah ! cease that weary pacing to and fro ; 
Sit down beside me in this cushioned nest 

Warm with the brightness of our ingleglow. 
Dear, thou art troubled. Let me share thy lot 

Of shadow, as I shared thy sunshine hours: 
I am no child, though childhood, half forgot, 

Lies close behind me, with its toys and flowers. 
I am a woman waked by happy love 

To keep home's altar-fire alight; 
Thou hast elected me to stand above 

All others in thine heart: I claim my right — 
Not wife alone, but mate and comrade true; 
I shared thy roses, let me share thy rue. 

"Bitter? I know it. God hath made it so. 

But from his hand shall we take good alone, 
And evil never? Let the world's wealth go: 

Life hath no loss which love cannot atone. 
Show me the new hard path which we must tread: 

I shall not faint nor falter by the way; 
And, be there cloud or sunshine overhead, 

I shall not fail thee to my dying day. 
But love me, love me! Let our hearts and lips 

Cling closer in our sorrow than in joy ; 
Let faith outshine our fortune in eclipse, 

And love deem wealth a lost and broken toy. 
Joy made us glad, let sorrow find us true; 
God blessed our roses, he will bless our rue." 

A man does deep injustice to the woman lie has 
chosen to be his wife when he thinks that she is too 



122 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

frail and delicate to endure with him the storms 
that blow upon him, or that she is too inexperienced 
or too ignorant of life to discuss with him the prob- 
lems that cause him grave and earnest thought. 
She may not have all his practical wisdom with 
regard to the world's affairs, and yet she may be 
able to offer many a suggestion which shall prove 
of more value to him than the counsel of shrewd 
men of the world. Woman's quick intuition often 
sees at a glance what man's slow logic is long in 
discovering. There is many a man whose success 
would have been greater far, or to whom failure 
would not have come, had he but sought or accept- 
ed his wife's counsel and help. Even if a wife can 
give no real practical aid, her husband will be made 
ten times stronger in his own heart by her strength- 
ening sympathy and brave cheer while he is carry- 
ing his load or fighting his battle. 

Whether, therefore, the day bring defeat or vic- 
tory, failure or success, a man should confide all to 
his wife in the evening. If the day has been pros- 
perous, she has a right to the gratification. If it 
has been adverse, she will want, as a true, heroic 
wife, to help her husband bear his burden and to 
whisper in his ear her word of loving cheer and 
encouragement. 



FOR BETTER OR WORSE. 123 

Not only does a man fail to give his wife due 
honor when he shuts her out from participation 
in the struggles, conflicts, anxieties and disappoint- 
ments of his life, but he also robs himself of that 
inspiration and help which every true and worthy 
wife earnestly longs to minister to the husband she 
loves. True marriage should unite husband and 
wife in their entire life, whether in joy or sorrow, 
in victory or defeat, in gain or loss. Then grief 
and loss, shared by wedded hearts, draws them 
closer together and renders their love richer, deep- 
er, sweeter, stronger. As Lowell sings : 

"I thought our love at full, but I did err; 

Joy's wreath dropped o'er my eyes: I could not see 

That sorrow in our happy world must be 
Love's deepest spokesman and interpreter. 
But, as a mother feels her child first stir 

Under her heart, so felt I instantly, 

Deep in my soul, another bond to thee 
Thrill with that life I saw depart from her. 
O mother of our angel-child! twice dear! 

Death knits as well as parts, and still, I wis, 
Her tender radiance shall infold us here, 

Even as the light, borne up by inward bliss, 
Threads the void glooms of space without a fear 

To print on farthest stars her pitying kiss." 

There are possibilities of wedded happiness and 
of home blessedness which many husbands and 



124 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

wives fail to reach. It ought not to be so. Mar- 
riage is intended of God to be as nearly perfect as 
anything human can be in this world. It is a sad 
pity when the beautiful divine pattern is so marred 
in the weaving by clumsy hands, and when the 
wedded life so fails in the realizing of the ideal 
prophetically visioned in love's early dreams, that 
for love's blissful, joyous communion there is only 
cold toleration within the walls which ought to 
be sweet home. 

This book may chance to find its way into the 
hands of some wedded pair whose hearts are sad 
through disappointment. They began their life 
together with large hopes and with almost heav- 
enly dreams of happiness. But at every point 
they have failed. Their lives have not blended. 
Indeed, they have seemed to be held apart as if by 
some strange mutually-repellent force, forbidding 
their real union of soul. It appears to them now 
that they can never realize the sweet dreams which 
filled their hearts when they went to the marriage 
altar. Both are disheartened. 

But surely there is no need for despair even in 
such a case as this. Longfellow tells in one of his 
poems of passing through the garden and seeing on 
the ground a fallen bird-nest, ruined and full of 



FOB BETTER OB WORSE. 125 

ruin. But, looking up into the tree above his 
head, he saw there the uncomplaining birds build- 
ing among the branches a new nest for themselves 
instead of the one which had fallen to the ground. 
May not the poet's picture carry a fresh hope to 
husband and wife sitting in sad discouragement 
amid the shadows of a marriage that has failed? 
The nest has fallen out of the green branches and 
lies on the ground torn and desolated, but can they 
not yet build a new one more beautiful than the 
one that is in ruin, and in it make blessed joy and 
peace for themselves ? God will help them if they 
will but come again to his feet to begin anew, and 
if they will but learn, at whatever cost of self-for- 
getfulness, love's holy secret. 



XII. 

"DOE YE NEXTE THYNGE." 

"Do the work that's nearest 
Though it's dull at whiles." 

Charles Kingsley. 

"Comings and goings 

No turmoil need bring ; 
His all thy future, 

1 Doe ye nexte thynge.' " 

PiUTY never is a haphazard thing ; it does not 
come to us in bundles from which we may- 
choose what we like best. There are never a half 
dozen things either one of which we may fitly do 
at any particular time ; there is some one definite 
and particular thing in the divine purpose for each 
moment. In writing music no composer strews the 
notes along the staff just as they happen to fall on 
this line or that space ; he sets them in harmonious 
order and succession, so that they will make sweet 
music when played or sung. The builder does not 
fling the stones and the beams into the edifice with- 
out plan ; every block and every piece of wood, stone 

126 



"DOE YE NEXTE THYNGE." 127 

or iron, and every brick, has its place and the 
building rises in graceful beauty. 

The days are like the lines and spaces in the 
musical staff, and duties are the notes ; each life 
is meant to be a perfect harmony, and in order to 
this each single duty has its own proper place. 
One thing done out of its time and place makes 
discord in the music of life, just as one note mis- 
placed on the staff mars the harmony. Each life 
is a building, and the little acts are the materials 
used; the whole is congruous and beautiful only 
when every act is in its own true place. Every- 
thing is beautiful in its time, but out of time the 
loveliest acts lose much of their loveliness. 

"Far better in its place the lowliest bird 

Should sing aright to Him the lowliest song 
Than that a seraph strayed should take the word 
And sing his glory wrong." 

The art of true living, therefore, consists largely 
in doing always the thing that belongs to the mo- 
ment. But how to know what is the duty of each 
moment is a question which to many is full of per- 
plexity. Yet it would be easy if our obedience 
were but more simple. We have but to take the 
duty that comes next to our hand — that which the 
moment brings. " Doe ye nexte thynge," says the 



128 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

quaint old Saxon legend. Our duty is never some 
far-away thing. We do not have to search for it ; 
it is always close at hand and easily found. The 
trouble is that we complicate the question of duty 
for ourselves by our way of looking at life, and 
then get our feet entangled in the meshes which 
our own hands have woven. 

Much of this confusion arises from taking too 
long views. We try to settle our duty in large 
sections. We think of years rather than of mo- 
ments, of life-work rather than of individual acts. 
It is hard to plan a year's duty ; it is easy to plan 
just for one short day. No shoulder can bear up 
the burden of a year's cares all gathered back into 
one load ; the weakest shoulder can carry without 
weariness just what really belongs to one day. In 
trying to grasp the whole year's duty we are apt to 
overlook and to miss that of the present hour, just 
as one in gazing at a far-off mountain-top is likely 
not to see the little flower blooming at his feet, and 
even to tread it down as he stalks along. 

There is another way in which many people com- 
plicate the question of duty. They try to reach 
decisions to-day on matters that really are not be- 
fore them to-day, and that will not be before them 
for months — -possibly for years. For example, a 



"DOE YE NEXTE THYNGE." 129 

young man came to me the other day in very sore 
perplexity over a question of duty. He said he 
could not decide whether to go as a foreign mis- 
sionary or to devote his life to work in some home- 
field. Yet he had but just closed his freshman year 
in college. It would require him three years to 
complete his college course, and then he would have 
to spend three years more in the theological semi- 
nary. Six years hence he would be ready for his 
work as a minister, and it was concerning his choice 
of field then that the young man was now in such 
perplexity. He said that often he passed hours on 
his knees in prayer, seeking for light, but that no 
light had come. He had even tried fasting, but 
without avail. The matter had so taken posses- 
sion of his mind that he had scarcely been able to 
study during the last three months, and he had 
fallen behind his class. His health, too, he felt, 
was being endangered, as he often lay awake much 
of the night thinking upon the momentous question 
of his duty, as between home and foreign work. 

It is very easy to see what was this young man's 
mistake : he was trying to settle now a question 
with which he had nothing whatever to do at the 
present time. If he is spared to complete his course 
of training, the question will emerge as a really 



130 PB ACTIO AL RELIGION. 

practical one five or six years hence. It is folly for 
him now to try to compel a decision which he can- 
not make intelligently and without perplexity; 
from the fact that he cannot so make it, it is evi- 
dent that the decision is no part of his present 
duty. He wonders that he can get no light upon 
the matter — that even in answer to agonizing prayer 
the perplexity does not grow less. But is there any 
ground to expect God to throw light on a man's 
path so far in advance of his steps ? Is there any 
promise that prayer for guidance at a point so re- 
mote will be answered now? Why should it be? 
Will it not be time enough for the answer to come 
when the decision is really to be made? 

Certainly it is right for the young man to pray 
concerning this matter, but his present request 
should be that God would direct his preparation 
so that he may be fitted for the work, whatever it 
may be, that in the divine purpose is waiting for 
him, and that at the proper time God would lead 
him to his allotted field. " Lord, prepare me for 
what thou art preparing for me," was the daily 
prayer of one young life. This is the fitting prayer 
for this Christian student; but to pray that he may 
know now where the Lord will send him to labor 
six years hence is certainly an unwarranted asking 



"DOE YE NEXTE THYNGE." 131 

which is little short of presumption and of imper- 
tinent human intermeddling with divine things. 

Another obvious element of mistake in this 
young man's case is that he is neglecting his pres- 
ent duty or failing to do it well while he is perplex- 
ing himself about what his duty will be several 
years hence. Thus he is hindering the divine 
purpose in his own preparation for the work his 
Master has planned for him. Life is not an hour 
too long; every moment of time allotted to us 
is necessary in realizing the divine plan for our 
lives. The preparatory years are enough, if they 
are faithfully used, in which to prepare for the 
years of life-work which come after. But every 
hour we waste leaves its own flaw in our preparation. 
Many people go halting and stumbling all through 
life, missing opportunities and continually failing 
where they ought to have succeeded, because they 
neglected their duty in the preparatory years. 

The case of this student is typical of many. 
There are more persons who worry about matters 
that belong altogether to the future than there 
are who are anxious to do well the duty of the 
present moment. If we would simply do always 
the next thing, we would be relieved of all per- 
plexity. This would also ensure our doing well 



132 PRACTICAL RELIGION, 

whatever God gives us to do. Instead of looking 
far on for our duty, we would then find it always 
close before us. Instead of trying to make out 
what we ought to do next year or six years hence, 
we would ask only what we shall do the present 
hour. Instead of looking for our duty in large 
sections, we should then receive it in detail. The 
meaning of this rule of living is well illustrated 
in a little poem entitled 

"'DOE YE NEXTE THYNGE.' 

"From an old English parsonage 

Down by the sea 
There came, in the twilight, 

A message to me; 
Its quaint Saxon legend, 

Deeply engraven, 
Hath, as it seems to me, 

Teaching from Heaven; 
And through the hours 

The quiet words ring 
Like a low inspiration : 

'Doe ye nexte thynge.' 

" Many a questioning, 

Many a fear, 
Many a doubt, 

Hath its quieting here. 
Moment by moment, 

Let down from heaven, 
Time, opportunity, 

Guidance, are given. . 






"DOE YE NEXTE THYNGEP 133 

Fear not to-morrows, 

Child of the King ; 
Trust them with Jesus: 

'Doe ye nexte thynge/ 

"Do it immediately, 

Do it with prayer, 
Do it reliantly, 

Casting off care ; 
Do it with reverence; 

Tracing His hand 
Who hath placed it before thee 

With earnest command. 
Stayed on Omnipotence, 

Safe 'neath his wing, 
Leave all resulting: 

1 Doe ye nexte thynge.' " 

By following this simple counsel the young 
student would devote himself with all his energy 
to the studies that belong to his present stage of 
progress. Possibly it may become quite plain to 
him early in his course that his work as a minister 
will be in a particular field ; if so, this fact may 
shape in some sense his preparation. But if it 
still remains uncertain in what particular branch 
of ministerial service he is to labor, he should not 
give himself a moment's perplexity on the subject. 
Clearly, God holds this as yet unrevealed in his 
own hands. The student's duty is to make the 
best possible use of his present opportunities for 



134 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

study and self-discipline. At the right time he 
will have no difficulty in deciding where he is to 
work. 

The law of divine guidance is, " Step by step." 
One who carries a lantern on a country-road at 
night sees only one step before him. If he takes 
that, he carries his lantern forward, and thus makes 
another step plain. At length he reaches his desti- 
nation in safety, without once stepping into dark- 
ness. The whole way has been made light for him, 
though only a single step of it at a time. This 
illustrates the usual method of God's guidance. 
His word is represented as a lamp unto the feet. 
It is a lamp — not a blazing sun, nor even a light- 
house, but a plain, common lamp or lantern which 
one can carry about in the hand. It is a lamp 
"unto the feet," not throwing its beams afar, not 
illumining a hemisphere, but shining only on the 
one little bit of road on which the pilgrim's feet 
are walking. 

If this is the way God guides, it ought never to 
be hard for us to find our duty. It never lies far 
away, inaccessible to us, but is always near — always 
" ye nexte thynge." It never lies out of our sight, 
in the darkness, for God never puts our duty where 
we cannot see it. The thing that we think may be 



"DOE YE NEXTE THYNGE." 135 

our duty, but which is still lying in obscurity and 
uncertainty, is not our duty yet, whatever it may be 
a little farther on. The duty for the very moment 
is always clear, and that is as far as we need con- 
cern ourselves ; for when we do the little that is 
clear, we will carry the light on, and it will shine 
on the next moment's step. 

Miners carry their small lamps fastened to their 
caps. These lamps do not flood the whole great dark 
chamber of the mine where the men work, but they 
do light the one little spot where the miner has to 
strike his pick. Duty is a lamp, and as we move 
forward in quiet obedience we carry our own light 
with us, and thus never have to work in dark- 
ness, though it may be dense night close on all 
sides of us. 

If not even one little step is plain to us, " ye 
nexte thynge " is to wait. Sometimes that is God's 
will for us. At least, it never is his will that we 
should take a step into the darkness. He never 
hurries us. We had better always wait than rush 
on as if we are not quite sure of the way. Often 
in our impatience we do rash things which we 
find after a little were not God's " nexte thynges " 
for us at all. That was Peter's mistake when he 
cut off a man's ear in the garden, and it led to sore 



136 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

trouble and humiliation a little later. There are 
many quick, impulsive people who are continually 
doing wrong next things, and who then find their 
next thing trying to undo the last. We must always 
wait for God, and never take a step which he has 
not made light for us. 

" To wait is naught 
When waiting means to serve." 

Yet we must not be too slow ; this danger is as 
great as that of being too quick. The people were 
never to go until the pillar moved ; they were 
neither to run ahead nor to lag behind. Indolence 
is as bad as rashness. There are some people who 
are never on time. They never do things just 
when they ought to be done. They are continually 
in perplexity which of several things they ought to 
do first. The trouble is they are for ever putting 
off or neglecting or forgetting things, and conse- 
quently each morning finds them facing not only 
that day's duties, but the omitted duties of past 
days. There never really are two duties for the 
same moment; and if everything is done in its 
time, there never will be any perplexity in discover- 
ing what is the right thing to do next. 

It is a comfort to know that our duties are not 






"DOE YE NEXTE THYNGE." 137 

the accidents of any undirected flow of circum- 
stances. We are plainly assured that if we ac- 
knowledge the Lord in all our ways he will direct 
our paths — that is, if we keep eye and heart ever 
turned toward God, we shall never be left to grope 
after the path, for it will be pointed out to us. 
We are authorized to pray that God would order 
our " steps ;" what direction in duty could be more 
minute than that ? Jesus said, " He that folio weth 
me shall not walk in darkness/' We must note 
well the Master's word : it is he that followeth him 
who shall not walk in darkness. We must not run 
on ahead of him, neither must we lag behind ; in 
either case we shall find it darkness — -just as deep 
darkness in advance of our Guide if we will not 
wait for him as it is behind him if we will not 
keep close up to him. 

Prompt, unquestioning, undoubting following of 
Christ takes all the perplexity out of Christian life 
and gives unbroken peace. There is something for 
every moment, and duty is always "ye nexte 
thynge." It may sometimes be an interruption, 
setting aside a cherished plan of our own, breaking 
into a pleasant rest for which we had arranged or 
taking us away from a favorite occupation. It may 
be to meet a disappointment, to take up a cross, to 



138 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

endure a sorrow or to pass through a trial. It may be 
to go up stairs and be sick for a time, letting go one's 
hold on all active life, or it may be just the plainest, 
commonest bit of routine daily work in the house, 
in the office, on the farm, at school. Most of us 
find the greater number of our " next things " in 
the tasks that are the same day after day, yet even 
in the interstices amid these set tasks there come 
a thousand little things of kindness, patience, gen- 
tleness, thoughtfulness, obligingness, like the sweet 
flowers that grow in the crevices between the cold, 
hard rocks, and we should always be ready for 
these as we hurry along, as well as for the sterner 
duties that our common calling brings to us. 

There never is a moment without its duty ; and 
if we are living near to Christ and following him 
closely, we shall never be left in ignorance of what 
he wants us to do. If there is nothing — absolutely 
nothing — for us to do at any time, then we may be 
sure that the Master wants us to sit down a mo- 
ment at his feet and rest. For he is not a hard 
Master, and, besides, rest is as needful in its time 
as work. We need to rest in order to work ; so we 
must not worry when there come moments which 
seem to have no task for our hands. The next 
thing then is to sit down and rest a while. 



XIII. 

PEOPLE AS MEANS OF GRACE. 

" May every soul that touches mine — 
Be it the slightest contact — get therefrom some good, 
Some little grace, one kindly thought, 
One aspiration yet unfelt, one bit of courage 
For the darkening sky, one gleam of faith 
To brave the thickening ills of life, 

One glimpse of brighter skies beyond the gathering mists 
To make this life worth while 
And heaven a surer heritage I" 

Mrs. L. P. Sherman. 

" Iron sharpeneth iron ; 
So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." 

Proverbs of Solomon. 

rilHERE are pairs of pictures which show parties 
of Indian children and youth, first as they 
appeared when they came to Hampton or Carlisle, 
fresh from their barbarism, with the dress and all 
other marks of their savage state, then as they 
appeared after a time in the school, so transformed 
as to dress, expression of face and entire bearing as 
to be wellnigh, if not altogether, unrecognizable. 

139 



140 PE ACTIO AL RELIGION. 

The change was wrought by the influences of 
Christian training and civilization, by contact with 
the lives of the men and women with whom they 
were associated as teachers and friends. It is not 
alone the instruction they have received that has so 
transformed these children of barbarism : it is the 
touch upon them of refined life and character. 
The blessing came to them not through books alone 
— not even through the Bible directly — but through 
other human lives which have themselves been 
leavened with the gentle and beautiful spirit of 
Jesus Christ. 

We call prayer, Bible-reading, the Lord's Supper, 
and certain other specifically religious exercises, 
means of grace, but our list is quite too short. 
Anything that helps to interpret Christ to us and 
to bring us into closer relations with him ; anything 
that becomes to us a disciplinary experience, draw- 
ing out and strengthening our life in any of its 
elements ; anything that makes us better, holier, 
sweeter in spirit, — is to us a means of grace. Under 
this head, therefore, we may put work, which 
develops our powers ; the struggle with trial and 
temptation, through which our natures are disci- 
plined ; the enduring of sorrow and pain, by 
which we are made more pure ; and all experiences 



PEOPLE AS MEANS OF GRACE. 141 

of life which result, or are designed to result, in 
the growth of our spiritual life. 

Among other means of grace we must put our 
association with other people. In contact life with 
life we are impressed, wrought upon and influenced. 
Indeed, we receive the larger portion of our divine 
gifts through human hearts and lives. We some- 
times overlook this and think of God as reaching 
down his mercies to us directly and immediately 
without the intervention of mediators. But closer 
thought shows us that ordinarily this is not the way 
our spiritual good things come to us. Ordinarily, 
God passes his gifts to us through others. 

"He hides himself within the love 

Of those that we love best ; 
The smiles and tones that make our homes 

Are shrines by him possessed. 
He tents within the lowly heart 

And shepherds every thought ; 
We find him not by seeking long, 

We lose him not unsought." 

The Incarnation is the largest illustration of this 
truth. When God desired to reveal himself to 
men, he did not come down in flaming glory like 
Sinai's — the dazzling splendor would have blinded 
men's eyes — but manifested himself in a sweet and 
beautiful life. In human form Christ could come 



142 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

close to sinful men without awing or alarming 
them ; and when they touched him, grace flowed 
from his lips and life to bless them. 

What was true of this largest of all manifesta- 
tions is true in lesser ways of all God's revealings. 
He does not open a window in heaven that we may 
look in and see his face. Even Christ does not 
come down and walk again upon our streets that 
we may see him as the disciples saw him : he makes 
himself known to us in and through the life of 
others. Even as in a dewdrop quivering on leaf or 
grass-blade on a summer's morning one can see the 
whole expanse of the blue sky, so in the lowliest 
life of a true believer there is a mirroring, though 
dim and imperfect, of the brightness of God's glory. 
Thus God reveals his love to a child through the 
love of the mother. Human parenthood is a little 
mirror in which the child sees reflected a vision of 
divine beauty. Thus the mother is the first means 
of grace to her child ; she is the earliest interpreter 
to it of God's love and tenderness, of God's thought- 
fulness and care, of God's holiness and authority. 

The child is also a means of grace to the parent. 
Parents are set to train their children, to teach them 
about God and their duty and to build them up in 
character; but, while parents strive to do this 



PEOPLE AS MEANS OF GRACE. 143 

sacred work for their children, the children in 
turn become teachers to their parents. A devout 
father and mother learn more of the love of God 
and of God's fatherhood as they bend over their 
first-born child or hold it in their arms than ever 
they had learned before from teachers and from books 
— even from the Bible. Their own feelings toward 
their child interpret God's feelings toward them; 
as their hearts warm toward their offspring and 
are thrilled with holy affection, they learn how the 
heart of the heavenly Father warms toward them 
and is thrilled with tenderness and yearning as he 
looks upon them. 

In other ways, too, is a child a means of grace to 
its parents. Jesus set a little child in the midst of 
his disciples and bade them learn from it lessons of 
humility and simplicity. Every child that grows 
up in a true home is a constant teacher, and its 
opening life, like a rosebud in its unfolding, pours 
beauty and sweetness all about. Many a home has 
been transformed by the unconscious ministry of a 
little child. 

Children are means of grace to parents, also, in 
the very care and anxiety which they cause. They 
are troubles as well as comforts. We have to work 
the harder to make provision for them ; we have to 



144 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

deny ourselves when they come, and begin to live 
for them. They cost us many anxieties, too — 
sleepless nights, ofttimes, when they are sick, days 
of weariness when a thousand things have to be 
done for them. Then we have to plan for them and 
think of their education and training, and we have 
to teach them and look to the formation of their 
habits. In many cases, too, they cause sore anxiety 
and distress of heart by their waywardness and by 
our apprehension that they may not turn out well. 
In many homes the sorrow over the living is greater 
far than that for the dead who have passed to sweet 
rest. 

" Not for the dead, O Lord, we weep : 
Untroubled is their rest, and deep; 
For them why should we mourn or sigh? 
' Neath quiet graves in peace they lie : 
"Thou givest thy beloved sleep/ 

"For tempted souls, for wand' ring sheep, 
For those whose path is rough and steep, — 
For these we lift our voice on high, 
Not for the dead." 

Yet it is in these very experiences that our chil- 
dren become especially means of grace to us. We 
learn lessons of patience in our constant care for 
them. We are trained to unselfishness as, under 



PEOPLE AS MEANS OF GRACE. 145 

the strong pressure of love, we are all the while 
denying ourselves and making personal sacrifices 
for them, doing all manner of serving for them. 
We are trained to gentler, softer moods as we wit- 
ness their sufferings and as our hearts are pained 
by our anxieties on their behalf. Our distress as 
we watch them in their struggles and temptations 
and are grieved by their heedlessness and wayward- 
ness works its rich discipline in our own lives, 
teaching us compassion and faith as we cry to God 
for them. There really are no such growing-times 
in the lives of true Christian parents as when they 
are bringing up their children. 

But not only are children thus means of grace to 
parents : the same is true of all lives in their influ- 
ence one upon another. We learn many of our best 
lessons from our associations with our fellow-men. 
Every fragment of moral beauty in a regenerated 
life is a mirroring of a little fragment, at least, of 
the image of God on which our eyes may gaze. 
Every true Christian life is in an imperfect degree, 
and yet truly, a new incarnation : " Christ liveth in 
me." We cannot live with God, but we are per- 
mitted to live in very close and intimate relations 
with people who bear something of God's likeness. 

The good and the holy are therefore means of grace 
10 



146 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

to us because they help to interpret to us the char- 
acter and the will of God. In sympathetic fel- 
lowship with them we are made conversant with 
holiness in actual life, brought down out of the 
holy Book and incarnated before our eyes, and 
the effect is to produce like holiness in ourselves. 

"Meanwhile, with every son and saint of Thine 
Along the glorious line, 
Sitting by turns beneath thy sacred feet, 

We'll hold communion sweet — 
Know them by look and voice and thank them all 

For helping us in thrall, 
For words of hope and bright examples given 
To show through moonless skies that there is light in 
heaven." 

If living in direct spiritual communion with God 
is too high an experience for us, the next stage of 
privilege is living with others who are in constant 
intercourse with him. Converse with those who 
lie in Christ's bosom and know the secret of the 
Lord cannot but greatly enrich our own knowl- 
edge of divine things and elevate the tone of our 
own lives as we admire the purity, the truth, the 
goodness we see in them, and seek to attain these 
qualities for ourselves. One of the richest means 
of spiritual culture, therefore, is association with 
those whose lives are Christlike and the study of 



PEOPLE AS MEANS OF GRACE. 147 

the biographies of the good and the holy who have 
gone from earth. 

Then, even the faults and the infirmities of those 
with whom we come in contact may become to us 
means of grace. It is harder to live with disagree- 
able people than with those who are congenial, but 
the very hardness may become a discipline to us and 
help to develop in us the grace of patience. Asso- 
ciation with quarrelsome, quick-tempered people 
may train us to self-control in speech, teaching us 
either to be silent under provocation or to give 
only the soft answer which turneth away wrath. 
Socrates had a wife — Xantippe — who, if history 
does not defame her, had a most violent temper. 
Socrates said he married her and endured her for 
self-discipline. No doubt his wife's temper was a 
means of cultivating self-control in him, and any 
one who may be similarly unfortunate in life's close 
associations should strive to use his misfortune as a 
means of gaining a full and complete conquest over 
himself. Thus even the evil in others may be made 
to yield its good and its blessings to us if only we 
rise to our opportunity. 

Thus on all sides we find people means of grace 
to us. From the good and the saintly we get in- 
spirations toward better things and are lifted up 



148 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

imperceptibly toward goodness and saintliness ; from 
the gentle and the loving we receive softening in- 
fluences which melt our hard, cold winter into the 
genial glow of summer; from the rude and the 
quarrelsome we get self-discipline in our continued 
effort, so far as in us lies, to live peaceably with 
them despite their disagreeableness and their dis- 
position to contention. Friction polishes not only 
metals, but characters also. Iron sharpeneth iron ; 
life sharpeneth life. People are means of grace 
to us. 

We grow best, therefore, as Christians, in our 
true places in associated life. Solitariness is not 
good ; in the broader as well as in the narrower 
sense it is not good for man to be alone. Every 
life needs solitude at times ; we should all get into 
each of our busy days an hour of silence when 
human presences shall be shut away by the veil 
that shuts us in alone with God. We need such 
hours for quiet thought, for communion with Christ, 
for introspection, for spiritual feeding, for the draw- 
ing of blessing and holy influences down from heav- 
en to replenish the waste produced by earth's toil, 
struggle and sorrow. There is a time for being 
alone, but we should not seek to live always nor 
usually in this way. Life in solitude grows self- 



PEOPLE AS MEANS OF GRACE. 149 

ish. The weeds of evil desire and unhealthy emo- 
tion flourish in solitariness. 

We need to live among people that the best 
things in our lives may be drawn out in thought 
and care and service for others. It is by no means 
a good thing for us to live in such circumstances 
that we are not required to think of others, to 
make self-denials for others, and to live for others, 
not for ourselves. The greater and more constant 
the pressure toward unselfishness, toward looking 
out and not in, and lending a hand, the better for 
the true growth and development of our lives. 
We never become unselfish save under conditions 
that compel us to live unselfishly. If we live — as 
we may live — with heart and life open to every 
good influence, we get some blessing, some inspira- 
tion, some warning, some touch of beauty, some 
new drawing out of latent life, some fresh uplift, 
from every person we meet, even most casually. 
There is no life with which we come in contact 
which may not bring us some message from God 
or by its very faults and infirmities help to disci- 
pline us into stronger, calmer, deeper, truer life, 
and thus become to us a means of grace. 



XIV, 

SHALL WE WORRY? 

u The little worries which we meet each day 
May lie as stumbling-blocks across our way, 
Or we may make them stepping-stones to be 
Of grace, O Lord, to thee." 

A. E. Hamilton. 

TTTHEN you are inclined to worry — don't do it. 
That is the first thing. No matter how 
much reason there seems to be for worrying, still, 
there is your rule. Do not break it : don't worry. 
Matters may be greatly tangled, so tangled that 
you cannot see how they ever can be straightened 
out ; still, don't worry. Troubles may be very 
real and very sore, and there may not seem a rift 
in the clouds ; nevertheless, don't worry. 

You say the rule is too high for human observ- 
ance — that mortals cannot reach it; or you say 
there must be some exceptions to it — that there are 
peculiar circumstances in w T hich one cannot but 
worry. But wait a moment. What did the Mas- 
ter teach ? "I say unto you, be not anxious for 

150 



SHALL WE WORRY? 151 

your life. ... Be not anxious for the morrow." 
He left no exceptions. What did St. Paul teach ? 
" In nothing be anxious." He said not a word about 
exceptions to the rule, but left it unqualified and 
absolute. A good bit of homely, practical, com- 
mon-sense wisdom says that there are two classes 
of things we should not worry about — things we 
can help, and things we cannot help. Evils we 
can help we ought to help. If the roof leaks, we 
ought to mend it ; if the fire is burning low and 
the room growing cold, we ought to put on more 
fuel ; if the fence is tumbling down, so as to let our 
neighbor's cattle into our wheat-field, we had better 
repair the fence than sit down and worry over the 
troublesomeness of people's cows ; if we have dys- 
pepsia and it makes us feel badly, we had better 
look to our diet and our exercise. That is, we are 
very silly if we worry about things we can help. 
Help them. That is the heavenly wisdom for that 
sort of ills or cares : that is the way to cast that 
kind of burden on the Lord. 

But there are things we cannot help. " Which 
of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto 
his stature ?" What folly, then, for a short man to 
worry because he is not tall, or for a woman to 
worry about the color of her hair, or for aqy one 



152 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

to worry because of any physical peculiarities he may 
have? These are types of a large number of 
things in people's lives which no human power 
can change. Why worry about these ? Will wor- 
rying do any good? So we come to the same 
result by applying this common-sense rule. Things 
we can make better we should make better, and not 
fret about them ; and things we cannot help or 
change we should accept as God's will for us, and 
make no complaint about them. This very simple 
principle, faithfully applied, would eliminate all 
worrying from our lives. 

As children of our heavenly Father we may go 
a step farther. If this world were governed by 
chance, no amount either of philosophy or of 
common sense could keep us from worrying; but 
we know that our Father is taking care of us. No 
little child in truest and most sheltered home was 
ever carried so closely or so safely in the love and 
thought and care of earthly parents as is the least 
of God's little ones in the heavenly Father's heart. 
The things we cannot help or change are in his 
hand, and belong to the " all things " which, we are 
assured, " work together for good to them that love 
God." In the midst of all the great rush of events 
and circumstances in which we can see no order 



SHALL WE WORRY? 153 

and no design we well know that each believer in 
Christ is as safe lis any little child in the arms of the 
most loving mother. It is not a mere blind faith that 
we try to nourish in our hearts as we seek to school 
ourselves to quietness and confidence amid all life's 
trials and disappointments : it is a faith that rests 
upon the character and the infinite goodness of God 
— the faith of a little child in a Father whose name 
is "Love" and whose power extends to every part 
of his universe. So here we find solid rock upon 
which to stand, and good reason for our lesson that 
we should never worry. Our Father is taking care 
of us. This argument is well expressed in the fol- 
lowing lines : 



" If I could only surely know 
That all the things that tire me so 

Were noticed by my Lord — 
The pang that cuts me like a knife, 
The lesser pains of daily strife — 
What peace it would afford ! 

" I wonder if he really shares 
In all these little human cares, 
This mighty King of kings ? 
If Pie who guides through boundless space 
Each blazing planet in its place 
Can have the condescending grace 
To mind these petty things ? 



154 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

" It seems to me, if sure of this, 
Blent with each ill would come such bliss 

That I might covet pain, 
And deem whatever brought to me 
The loving thought of Deity 
And sense of Christ's sweet sympathy, 

Not loss, but richest gain. 

" Dear Lord, my heart shall no more doubt 
That thou dost compass me about 

With sympathy divine : 
The Love for me once crucified 
Is not the love to leave my side, 
But waiteth ever to divide 
Each smallest care of mine." 

But if we are never to worry, what shall we do 
with the things that incline us to anxiety? There 
are many such things in the life even of the most 
warmly sheltered. There are disappointments that 
leave the hands empty after days and years of hope 
and toil ; there are resistless thwartings of fondly- 
cherished plans and purposes; there are bereave- 
ments that seem to sweep away every earthly joy ; 
there are perplexities through which no human 
wisdom can lead the feet ; there are experiences in 
every life whose natural effect is to perturb the 
spirit and produce deep and painful anxiety. If 
we are never to worry, what are we to do with 
these things that naturally tend to cause us worry ? 



SHALL WE WORRY? 155 

The answer is easy : we are to put all these dis- 
turbing and distracting things into the hands of 
God. Of course, if we carry them ourselves, we 
cannot help worrying over them. But we are not 
to carry them ; we cannot if we would. Up to the 
measure of our wisdom and our ability we are to 
forecast our lives and shape our circumstances. 
What people sometimes call trust is only indolence ; 
we must meet life heroically. But when we have 
done our whole simple duty, there both our duty 
and our responsibility end. We cannot hold back 
the wave that the sea flings upon the beach ; we 
cannot control the winds and the clouds and the 
other forces of nature ; we cannot keep away the 
frosts that threaten to destroy our summer fruits ; 
we cannot shut out of our doors the sickness that 
brings pain and suffering or the sorrow that leaves 
its poignant anguish ; we cannot prevent the mis- 
fortune that comes through others or through public 
calamity. In the presence of all this class of ills we 
are utterly powerless ; they are irremediable by any 
wisdom or strength of ours. Why, then, should we 
endeavor to carry them, only to vex ourselves in vain 
with them ? 

Besides, there is no reason why we should even 
try to carry them. It would be a very foolish little 



156 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

child in a home of plenty and of love that should 
worry about its food and raiment or about its 
father's business-affairs, and be all the while in a 
state of anxiety and distress concerning its own 
safety and comfort. The child has nothing what- 
ever to do with these matters; its father and its 
mother are attending to them. 

Or imagine a great ship on the ocean and the 
child of the ship's captain on board. The child 
goes about the vessel anxious concerning every 
movement and worried lest something may go 
wrong — lest the engines may fail, or the sails give 
out, or the sailors not do their duty, or the pro- 
visions become exhausted, or the machinery break 
down. What has the captain's child to do with 
any of these things? The child's father is look- 
ing after them. 

We are God's children, living in our Father's 
world, and we have nothing more to do with the 
world's affairs than the shipmaster's little child has 
to do with the management and care of the great 
vessel in mid-ocean. We have only to stay in our 
place and attend to our own little personal duties, 
giving ourselves no shadow of anxiety about any- 
thing else. That is what we are to do instead of 
worrying when we meet things that would naturally 



SHALL WE WORRY? 157 

perplex us. We are just to lay them in God's 
hands — where they belong — that he may look after 
them while we abide in quiet peace and go on with 
our little daily duties. 

We have high scriptural authority for this. This 
is what St. Paul teaches in his immortal prison-letter, 
when he says, " Be careful [or anxious] for nothing ; 
but in everything by prayer and supplication, with 
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto 
God. And the peace of God, which passeth all under- 
standing, shall keep your hearts and your minds 
through Christ Jesus." The points here shine out 
very clearly. We are to be anxious in nothing, in no 
possible circumstances — are never to worry. Instead 
of being anxious, we are to take everything to God 
in prayer. The result will be peace : " The peace 
of God shall keep your hearts and your minds 
through Christ Jesus." St. Peter's counsel is 
similar, though more condensed. In the Revised 
"Version its meaning comes out more clearly : " Cast- 
ing all your anxiety upon him, because he careth for 
you." God is taking care of you, not overlooking 
the smallest thing, and you have but to cast all your 
anxiety upon him and then be at peace. It is try- 
ing to carry our own cares that produces worry ; 
our duty is to cast them all upon Christ, giving our- 



158 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

selves thought only about our duty. This is the 
secret of peace. 

There is a practical suggestion which may be 
helpful in learning this lesson. The heart in its 
pressure of care or pain cannot well remain silent ; 
it must speak or break. Its natural impulse is to 
give utterance to its emotion in cries of pain or in 
fretful complainings and discontented murmurings. 
It will be a great relief to the overburdened spirit 
if in time of pain or trial the pent-up feelings can 
be given some other vent than in expressions of 
worry or anxiety. It is most suggestive, therefore, 
that in St. Paul's words, already quoted, when he 
says we should take our anxieties to God in prayer, 
he adds " with thanksgiving." The songs of thanks- 
giving carry off the heart's suppressed pain and give 
it relief. 

In Marble Faun, Hawthorne makes Miriam, 
the broken-hearted singer, in the midnight song 
that went up from the Roman Coliseum, put into 
the melody the pent-up shriek to which her anguish 
had almost given vent a moment before : " That 
volume of melodious voice was one of the tokens 
of a great trouble. The thunderous anthem gave 
her an opportunity to relieve her heart by a great 
cry." It is better always to put pain or grief into 



SHALL WE WORRY? 159 

melody than into wails. It is better for the heart 
itself; it is a sweeter relief. There are no wings 
like the wings of song and praise to bear away 
life's burdens. Then it is better for the world to 
start a song trembling in its air than to set loose a 
shriek or a cry of anguish to fly abroad. 

We remember that our Lord, when he was nailed 
on the cross, where his sufferings must have been 
excruciating, instead of a cry of anguish turned 
the woe of his heart into a prayer of intercession 
for his murderers. St. Paul, too, in his prison, his 
back torn with the scourge and his feet fast in the 
stocks, uttered no word of complaint and no cry of 
pain, but gave vent to his great suffering in mid- 
night hymns of praise which rang through all the 
prison. 

These illustrations suggest a wonderful secret of 
heart-peace in the time of distress, from whatever 
cause. We must find some outflow for our pent- 
up emotions ; silence is unendurable. We may not 
complain nor give utterance to feelings of anxiety, 
but we may turn the bursting tides into the chan- 
nels of praise and prayer. 

Then, we may also find relief in loving service 
for others. Indeed, there is no more wonderful 
secret of joyful endurance of trial than this. If 



160 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

the heart can put its pain or its fear into helping 
and comforting those who are in need and in trouble, 
it soon forgets its own care. If the whole inner 
story of lives were known, it would be found that 
many of those who have done the most to comfort 
the world's sorrow and bind up its wounds and help 
it in its need have been men and women whose own 
hearts found outlet for their pain, care or sorrow in 
ministries to others in Christ's name. Thus they 
found blessing for themselves in the peace that 
ruled in their lives, and they became blessings to 
the world by giving it songs instead of tears, and 
helpful service instead of the burden of discontent 
and complaining. 

If a bird has to be in a cage, it is better to be a 
canary to fill its place of imprisonment with happy 
song than to be a starling to sit dumb within the 
wire walls in inconsolable distress. If we must 
have cares and trials, it is better that we should 
be rejoicing Christians, brightening the very dark- 
ness of our environment with the bright light of 
Christian faith, than that we should succumb to 
our troubles and get nothing but worry out of our 
life, and give nothing to the world but murmurings 
and the memory of our miserable discontent. 



XV. 

A WORD ABOUT TEMPER. 

" Help us, O Lord ! with patiefit love to bear 

Each other's faults, to suffer with true meekness; 
Help us each other's joys and griefs to share, 
But let us turn to thee alone in weakness." 

11 /TORE than half of us are bad-tempered — at 
^^- least so an English philosopher tells us. 
He claims that this is no mere general statement 
and no bit of guesswork ; he gives us the figures 
for it. He arranged to have about two thousand 
people put unconsciously under espionage as to 
their ordinary temper, and then had careful reports 
made of the results. The footing up of the returns 
has been announced, and is decidedly unflattering to 
the two thousand tempers that were thus put to the 
test. More than half of these people — to be entirely 
accurate, fifty-two per centum of them — are set down 
as bad-tempered in various degrees. The dictionary 
has been wellnigh exhausted of adjectives of this 
order in giving the different shades of badness. 

11 161 



162 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

Acrimonious, aggressive, arbitrary, bickering, capri- 
cious, captious, choleric, contentious, crotchety, des- 
potic, domineering, easily offended, gloomy, grumpy, 
hasty, huffy, irritable, morose, obstinate, peevish, 
sulky, surly, vindictive, — these are some of the 
qualifying words. There are employed, in all, forty- 
six terms, none of which describes a sweet temper. 

We do not like to believe that the case is quite so 
serious — that a little more than every second one of 
us is unamiable in some offensive degree. It is easier 
to confess our neighbor's faults and infirmities than 
our own; so, therefore, quietly taking refuge for 
ourselves among the forty-eight per centum of good- 
tempered people, we shall probably be willing to 
admit that a great many of the people we know 
have at times rather ungentle tempers. They are 
easily provoked; they fly into a passion on very 
slight occasion ; they are haughty, domineering, 
peevish, fretful or vindictive. 

What is even worse, most of them appear to 
make no effort to grow out of their infirmities of 
disposition. The sour fruit does not come to mellow 
ripeness in the passing years ; the roughness is not 
polished off the diamond to reveal its lustrous 
hidden beauty. The same petulance, pride, vanity, 
selfishness and other disagreeable qualities are 



A WORD ABOUT TEMPER. 163 

found in the life year after year. Where there is a 
struggle to overcome one's faults and grow out of 
thein, and where the progress toward better and 
more beautiful spiritual character is perceptible, 
though ever so slow, we should have patience ; but 
where one appears unconscious of one's blemishes 
and manifests no desire to conquer one's faults 
there is little ground for encouragement. 

" Manlike is it to fall into sin : 
Fiendlike is it to dwell therein ; 
Christlike is it for sin to grieve ; 
Godlike is it all sin to leave." 

Bad temper is such a disfigurement of character, 
and, besides, works such harm to one's self and to 
one's neighbors, that no one should spare any pains or 
cost to have it cured. The ideal Christian life is one 
of unbroken kindliness. It is dominated by love — 
the love whose portrait is drawn for us in the im- 
mortal thirteenth of First Corinthians. It suffereth 
long and is kind. It envieth not. It vaunteth not 
itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself 
unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, 
taketh not account of evil ; beareth all things, 
believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all 
things. That is the picture ; then we have but to 
turn to the gospel pages to find the story of a Life 



164 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

in which all this was realized. Jesus never lost his 
temper. He lived among people who tried him at 
every point — some by their dullness, others by 
their bitter enmity and persecution — but he never 
failed in sweetness of disposition, in long-suffering 
patience, in self-denying love. Like the flowers 
which give out their perfume only when crushed, 
like the odoriferous wood which bathes with fra- 
grance the axe which hews it, the life of Christ 
yielded only the tenderer, sweeter love to the rough 
impact of men's rudeness and wrong. That is the 
pattern on which we should strive to fashion our 
life and our character. Every outbreak of violent 
temper, every shade of ugliness in disposition, mars 
the radiant loveliness of the picture we are seeking 
to have fashioned in our souls. Whatever is not 
loving is unlovely. 

There is another phase : bad-tempered people are 
continually hurting others, ofttimes their best and 
truest friends. Some people are sulky, and one per- 
son's sulkiness casts a chilling shadow over a whole 
household ; others are so sensitive, ever watching for 
slights and offended by the merest trifles, that even 
their nearest friends have no freedom of intercourse 
with them ; others are despotic, and will brook no 
kindly suggestion nor listen to any expression of 



A WORD ABOUT TEMPER. 165 

opinion; others are so quarrelsome that even the 
meekest and gentlest person cannot live peaceably 
with them. Whatever may be the special charac- 
teristic of the bad temper, it makes only pain and 
humiliation for the person's friends. 

A bad temper usually implies a sharp tongue. 
Sometimes, indeed, it makes one morose and glum. 
A brother and a sister living together are said often 
to have passed months without speaking to each 
other, though eating at the same table and sleeping 
under the same roof. A man recently died who 
for twelve years, it was said, had never spoken to 
his wife, though they continued to dwell together, 
and three times daily sat down together at the same 
table. Bad temper sometimes runs to proud silence. 
Such silence is not golden. Generally, however, a 
bad-tempered person has an unbridled tongue and 
speaks out his hateful feelings ; and there is no 
limit to the pain and the harm which angry and 
ugly words can produce in gentle hearts. 

" These clumsy feet, still in the mire, 
Go crushing blossoms without end ; 
These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust 
Among the heart-strings of a friend. 

" The ill-timed truth we might have kept— 

Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung ? 



166 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

The word we had not sense to say — 
Who knows how grandly it had rung ?" 

It would be easy to extend this portrayal of the 
evils of bad temper, but it will be more profitable 
to inquire how a bad-tempered person may become 
good-tempered. There is no doubt that this happy 
change is possible in any case. There is no temper 
so obdurately bad that it cannot be trained into 
sweetness. The grace of God can take the most 
unlovely life and transform it into the image of 
Christ. As in all moral changes, however, grace 
does not work independently of human volition 
and exertion : God always works helpfully with 
those who strive to reach Christlikeness. We must 
resist the devil, or he will not flee from us. We 
must struggle to obtain the victory over our own 
evil habits and dispositions, although it is only 
through Christ that we can be conquerors ; he will 
not make us conquerors unless we enter the battle. 
We have a share, and a large and necessary share, 
in the culture of our own character. The bad- 
tempered man will never become good-tempered 
until he deliberately sets for himself the task and 
enters resolutely and persistently upon its accom- 
plishment. The transformation will never come of 
itself even in a Christian. People do not grow out 



A WORD ABOUT TEMPER. 167 

of ugly temper into sweet refinement as a peach 
ripens from sourness into lusciousness. 

Then the thing to be accomplished is not the 
destroying of the temper : temper is a good qual- 
ity in its place. The task is not destruction, but 
control. A man is very weak who has a strong 
temper without the power of self-control ; likewise 
is he weak who has a weak temper. The truly 
strong man is he who is strong in the element of 
temper — that is, has strong passions and feelings 
capable of great anger, and then has perfect self- 
control. When Moses failed and broke down in 
temper, self-control, he was not the man to lead 
the people into the Promised Land ; therefore God 
at once prepared to relieve him. The task to be 
set, therefore, in self-discipline is the gaining of 
complete mastery over every feeling and emotion, 
so as to be able to restrain every impulse to 
speak or to act unadvisedly. 

Then there is need of a higher standard of char- 
acter in this regard than many people seem to set for 
themselves. We never rise higher than our ideals ; 
the perfect beauty of Christ should ever be visioned 
in our hearts as that which we would attain for our- 
selves. The honor of our Master's name should im- 
pel us to strive ever toward Christlikeness in spirit 



168 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

and in disposition. We represent Christ in this 
world ; people cannot see him, and they must look 
at us to see a little of what he is like. Whatever 
great work we may do for Christ, if we fail to live 
out his life of patience and forbearance, we fail in 
an essential part of our duty as Christians. " The 
servant of the Lord must be . . . gentle." 

Nor can we be greatly useful in our personal 
life while our daily conduct is stained by fre- 
quent outbursts of anger and other exhibitions of 
temper. In the old fable the spider goes about 
doing mischief wherever it creeps, while the bee 
by its wax and its honey makes "sweetness and 
light" wherever it flies. We had better be bees 
than be spiders, living to turn darkness into light 
and to put a little more sweetness into the life of 
all who know us. But only as our own lives shine 
in the brightness of holy affectionateness and our 
hearts and lips distill the sweetness of patience and 
gentleness can we fulfill our mission in this world 
as Christ's true messengers to men. 

In striving to overcome our impatience with 
others it will help us to remember that we and 
they have the common heritage of a sinful nature. 
The thing in them which irritates us is, no doubt, 
balanced by something in us which looks just as 



A WORD ABOUT TEMPER. 169 

unlovely in their eyes and just as sorely tries their 
forbearance toward us. Whittier wisely says : 

" Search thine own heart. What paineth thee 
In others, in thyself may be. 
All dust is frail, all flesh is weak : 
Be thou the true man thou dost seek." 

"Very likely, if we think our neighbors hard to 
live peaceably with, they think about the same of 
us; and who shall tell in whom lies the greater 
degree of fault ? Certain it is that a really good- 
tempered person can rarely ever be drawn into a 
quarrel with any one. He is resolutely determined 
that he will not be a partner in any unseemly strife ; 
he would rather suffer wrongfully than offer any re- 
taliation; he has learned to bear and to forbear. 
Then by his gentle tact he is able to conciliate 
any who are angry. 

A fable relates that in the depth of a forest there 
lived two foxes. One of them said to the other 
one day in the politest of fox-language, "Let's 
quarrel." — "Very well," said the other; "but 
how shall we set about it ?" Thev tried all sorts 
of ways, but in vain, for both would give way. 
At last one brought two stones. " There !" said 
he. " Now you say they are yours and I'll say they 
are mine, and we will quarrel and fight and scratch. 



170 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

Now I'll begin. Those stones are mine/' — "All 
right I" answered the other fox ; " you are welcome 
to them." — "But we shall never quarrel at this 
rate/' replied the first. — "No, indeed, you old 
simpleton ! Don't you know it takes two to make 
a quarrel ?" So the foxes gave up trying to quar- 
rel, and never played again at this silly game. 

The fable has its lesson for other creatures besides 
foxes. As far as in us lies, St. Paul tells us, we 
should live peaceably with all men. A wise man 
says, "Every man takes care that his neighbors 
shall not cheat him, but a day comes when he be- 
gins to care that he does not cheat his neighbors. 
Then all goes well. He has changed his market- 
cart into a chariot of the sun." So long as a man 
sees only the quarrelsome temper of his neighbor 
he is not far toward saintliness ; but when he has 
learned to watch and to try to control his own tem- 
per and to weep over his own infirmities, he is on 
the way to God, and will soon be conqueror over 
his own weakness. 

There is one place where our impatience, irrita- 
bility and ill-temper cannot but shame us. Says 
the Quaker poet, again : 

" My heart was heavy, for its trust had been 

Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong ; 



A WORD ABOUT TEMPER. 171 

So, turning gloomily from my fellow-men, 

One summer Sabbath day I strolled along among 

The green mounds of the village burial-place, 
Where, pondering how all human love and hate 
Find one sad level, and how, soon or late, 

Wronged and wrong-doer, each with meekened face 
And cold hands folded over a still heart, 

Pass the green threshold of our common grave, 
Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart, — 

Awed for myself and pitying my race, 

Our common sorrow like a mighty wave 

Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave." 

Life is too short to spend even one day of it in 
bickering and strife ; love is too sacred to be for 
ever lacerated and torn by the ugly briers of sharp 
temper. Surely we ought to learn to be patient 
with others, since God has to show every day such 
infinite patience toward us. Is not the very essence 
of true love the spirit that is not easily provoked, 
that beareth all things? Can we not, then, train 
our life to sweeter gentleness ? Can we not learn 
to be touched even a little roughly without resent- 
ing it? Can we not bear little injuries and appar- 
ent injustices without flying into an unseemly rage? 
Can we not have in us something of the mind of 
Christ which will enable us, like him, to endure all 
wrong and injury and give back no word or look 
of bitterness? The way over which we and our 



172 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

friend walk together is too short to be spent in 
wrangling. 

" They are such dear familiar feet that go 
Along the path with ours — feet fast or slow, 
And trying to keep pace. If they mistake, 
Or tread upon some flower that we would take 
Upon our breast, or bruise some reed, 
Or crush poor hope until it bleed, 
We may be mute, 
Not turning quickly to impute 
Grave fault ; for they and we 
Have such a little way to go — can be 
Together such a little while along the way — 
We will be patient while we may. 

" So many little faults we find ! 
We see them, for not blind 
Is love. We see them ; but if you and I 
Perhaps remember them some by and by, 
They will not be 

Faults then — grave faults — to you and me, 
But just odd ways, mistakes, or even less — 
Remembrances to bless. 
Days change so many things — yes, hours ; 
We see so differently in sun and showers. 
Mistaken words to-night 
May be so cherished by to-morrow's light. 
We may be patient, for we know 
There's such a little way to go." 



XVI. 

FORWARD, AND NOT BACK. 

"Arouse thee, soul ! 
Oh, there is much to do 
For thee if thou wouldst work for humankind ! 

The misty future through 
A greatness looms : 'tis mind — awakened mind ! 
Arouse thee, soul I" 

KOBERT NlCOLL. 

TT is a good thing always to face forward. Even 
nature shows that men's eyes were designed to 
look always " to the fore/' for no man has eyes in 
the back of his head, as all men certainly would 
have if it had been intended that they should spend 
much time in looking backward. We like to have 
Bible authority for our rules in life, and there is a 
very plain word of Scripture which says, 

" Let thine eyes look right on, 
And let thine eyelids look straight before thee." 

There is also a striking scriptural illustration in 
the greatest of the apostles, who crystalized the 
central principle of his active life in the remarkable 

173 



174 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

words, " This one thing I do, forgetting those things 
which are behind, and reaching forth unto those 
things which are before, I press toward the mark." 
The picture is of a man running in the race-course. 
He sees only one thing — the goal yonder. He does 
not trouble himself to look back to see how far he 
has come or how far the other runners are behind 
him ; he does not even look to the right hand or to 
the left to catch glimpses of his friends who are 
watching him and cheering him : his eyes look 
right on to the goal, while he bends every energy 
to the race. 

That is the picture St. Paul drew of himself as 
a man, as a Christian ; he forgot his past, and lived 
only for his future. We must remember, too, that 
he was an old man when he wrote these words ; 
looking at him, we would say there was but little 
before him now to live for — but little margin 
of life left to him. The young look forward 
naturally, because everything is before them : the 
long, bright future years seem to stretch out for 
them almost illimitably; they live altogether in 
hope, and as yet have no memories to draw their 
eyes and their hearts backward and to chain their 
lives to the past. But old people, who have spent 
most of their allotted years and have but a small 



FORWARD, AND NOT BACK. 175 

and fast-crumbling edge of life remaining, are 
much prone to live almost entirely in the past. 
The richest treasures of their hearts are there, left 
behind and passed by, and so their eyes and their 
thoughts are drawn backward rather than forward. 

Here, however, was one old man who cared noth- 
ing for what was past, and who lived altogether in 
hope, pressing on with quenchless enthusiasm into 
the future. What was gone was nothing to him in 
comparison with what was yet to come. The best 
things in his life were still to be won ; his noblest 
achievements were yet to be wrought ; his soul was 
still full of visions unrealized which would yet be 
realized. His eye pierced death's veil, for to him 
life meant immortality, and earth's horizon was not 
its boundary. The last glimpse we have of this old 
man he is about going forth from his Roman dun- 
geon to martyrdom, but he is still reaching forth 
and pressing on into the Before. His keen eye is 
fixed on a glory which other men could not see as 
with exultation he cried, " The time of my depart- 
ure is at hand. . . . Henceforth there is laid up for 
me a crown." 

There is something very sublime in such a life, 
and it ought to have its inspirations for us. We 
ought to train ourselves to live by the same rule. 



176 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

There is a tremendous waste in human energy and 
in all life's powers resulting from the habit of ever 
turning to look backward. While we stand thus, 
with arms folded, peering back into the mists and 
the shadows of the dead past, the great, resistless, 
never-resting tides of life are sweeping on, and we 
are simply left behind. And few things are sadder 
than this — men with their powers yet at their best 
left behind in the race and left alone because they 
stop and stand and look backward instead of keep- 
ing their eyes to the front and bravely pressing on 
to the things before. 

It is every way better to look forward than to 
look back. The life follows the eye ; we live as 
we look. But what is there ever behind us to live 
for ? There is no work to do ; no tasks wait there 
for accomplishment; no opportunities for helpful- 
ness or usefulness lie in the past. Opportunities, 
when once they have passed by, never linger that 
tardy laggards may yet come up and seize them ; 
passed once, they are gone for ever. Rose Terry 
Cooke writes : 



" Never comes the chance that passed : 
That one moment was its last. 
Though thy life upon it hung, 
Though thy death beneath it swung, 



FORWARD, AND NOT BACK. 177 

If thy future all the way 
Now in darkness goes astray, 
When the instant born of fate 
Passes through the golden gate, 
When the hour, but not the man, 
Comes and goes from Nature's plan, — 
Nevermore its countenance 
Beams upon thy slow advance ; 
Nevermore that time shall be 
Burden-bearer unto thee. 
Weep and search o'er land and main, 
Lost chance never comes again." 

We cannot impress ourselves in any way upon the 
past; the records which are written all over the 
pages of yesterday were made when yesterday was 
the living present. We cannot make any change 
on the past; we can undo nothing there, correct 
nothing, erase nothing. We may get a measure of 
inspiration from other men's past as we study their 
biographies and their achievements and grasp the 
secrets of their power. 

" Lives of great men all remind us 
We can make our lives sublime, 
And, departing, leave behind us 
Footprints on the sands of time." 

Then, we may get something, too, from our own 
past in the lessons of experience which we have 
learned. He certainly lives very heedlessly whose 

12 



178 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

days yield no wisdom ; yesterday's mistakes and 
failures should make the way plainer and straighter 
to-day. Past sorrows, too, should enrich our lives. 
All one's past is in the life of each new day — all its 
spirit, all its lessons, all its accumulated wisdom, all 
its power — lives in each present moment. Yet this 
benefit that comes from the things that are behind 
avails only when it becomes impulse and energy to 
send us forward the more resistlessly and wisdom 
to guide us the more safely. 

" Let the dead past bury its dead : 
Act, act in the living present." 

Therefore we should never waste a moment in 
looking back at our past attainments. Yet there are 
people who, especially in their later years, do little 
else. They are accomplished egotists, yet they 
never have anything but very old heroisms and 
achievements to talk about. They are garrulous 
enough concerning the great things they have done, 
but it was always a long time ago that they did 
them. All the grand and noble things in their 
life are little more than traditions. Their religious 
experiences, also, are of old date, and they seem 
never to have any new ones. Their testimonies 
and their prayers in the conference-meeting are 



FORWARD, AND NOT BACK. 179 

quite like the tunes of street-organs — the same 
always every time you hear them ; they never get a 
new tune, not even a new and revised edition of 
the old one. With mechanical invariableness and 
endless repetition they relate the same experiences 
year after year. They can tell a great deal about 
what they felt and what they did a long time ago, 
but not a word about what they felt and what they 
did yesterday. 

The utter inadequacy and the unworthiness of 
such living are apparent at a glance. No past 
glory avails for this living present. The radiance 
of last night will not make the stars brilliant to- 
night ; the beauty of last summer's flowers will not 
do for the flowers of this summer ; the industry of 
early manhood will not achieve results in mid-life 
or in old age ; the heroism of yesterday will w T in no 
laurels for the brow to-day. What matters it that 
one did great things some time in the past ? The 
question is, What is he doing now ? Suppose a man 
had ecstatic experiences ten or twenty years ago; 
ought he not to have had still more ecstatic ex- 
periences every year since ? Suppose a man did a 
noble thing twenty-five years ago; why should he 
still sound the praises of that one lone deed after 
so long a lapse of time? Ought he not to have 



180 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

done just as noble things all along his life as he did 
that particular day a quarter-century since? The 
ideal life is one that does its best every day, and 
sees ever in to-morrow an opportunity for some- 
thing better than to-day. It is sad when any 
one has to look back for his best achievements and 
his highest attainments. However lofty the plane 
reached, the face should still be turned forward and 
the heart should still be reaching onward for its best. 
The true life has its image in the tree which 
drops its ripe fruits in the autumn and forgets 
them, leaving them to be food for the hungry, 
while it straightway begins to prepare for another 
year's fruits. What an abnormal thing it would 
be for an apple tree to bear an abundant crop and 
then never again produce anything but, each year, 
a few scattered apples hanging lonesome on the 
widespreading branches, while the tree continued 
to glory year after year in its superb yield of long 
ago ! Is such a life any more fitting for an immor- 
tal man than for a soulless fruit tree? Immortal- 
ity should never content itself with any past. Not 
back, but forward, always should our eves be bent. 
The years should be ladder-steps upward, each lift- 
ing us higher. Even death should not intercept 
the onward look, for surely the best things are 



FOB WARD, AND NOT BACK. 181 

never this side, but always on beyond death's 
mists. Death is not a wall cutting off the path 
and ending all progress : it is a gate — an open 
gate — through which the life sweeps on through 
eternity. Progress, therefore, is endless, and the 
goal is ever unreached. 

Even the mistakes and the sins of the past 
should not draw our eyes back. Sins should in- 
stantly be confessed, repented of and forsaken, and 
that should be the end. To brood over them does 
no good ; we can never undo them, and no tears 
can obliterate the fact of their commission. The 
way to show true sorrow for wrong-doing is not to 
sit in sackcloth and ashes weeping over the ruin 
wrought, but to pour all the energy of our regret 
into new obedience and better service. The past 
we cannot change, but the future we can yet make 
beautiful if we will. It would be sad if in weep- 
ing over the sins of yesterday we should lose to- 
day also. Not an instant, therefore, should be 
wasted in unavailing regret when we have failed ; 
the only thing to do with mistakes is not to repeat 
them, while, at the same time, we set about striving 
to get some gain or blessing from them. 

Defeats in life should never detain us long, since 
only faith and courage are needed to change them 



182 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

into real victories. For, after all, it is character 
we are building in this world ; and if we use every 
experience to promote our growth, to make us bet- 
ter, if we emerge from it stronger, braver, truer, 
nobler, we have lost nothing, but have been the 
gainer. In reverses and misfortunes, then, we 
have but to keep our eyes fixed on Christ, caring 
only that no harm comes to our soul from the loss 
or the trial, and thus we shall be victorious. If 
we stop and look back with despairing heart at the 
wreck of our hopes and plans, our defeat will be 
real and humiliating ; like Lot's wife, we shall be 
buried beneath the encrusting salt. But if we 
resolutely turn away from the failure or the ruin 
and press on to brighter things — things that can- 
not perish — we shall get victory and win blessed- 
ness and eternal gain. "Look forward, and not 
back." Live to make to-morrow beautiful, not to 
stain yesterday with tears of regret and grief. 

" Out of the twilight of the past 
We move to a diviner light : 
For nothing that is wrong can last ; 
Nothing's immortal but the right." 



XVII. 

THE DUTY OF FORGETTING SORROW. 

" Thou knowest that through our tears 

Of hasty, selfish weeping 
Comes surer sin, and for our petty fears 

Of loss thou hast in keeping 
A greater gain than all of which we dreamed ; 

Thou knowest that in grasping 
The bright possessions which so precious seemed 

We lose them ; but if, clasping 
Thy faithful hand, we tread with steadfast feet 

The path of Thy appointing, 
There waits for us a treasury of sweet 

Delight, royal anointing 
With oil of gladness and of strength." 

Helen Hunt Jackson. 

O OREOW makes deep scars ; indeed, it writes its 
^ record ineffaceably on the heart which suffers. 
We really never get over our deep griefs ; we are 
really never altogether the same after we have 
passed through them as we were before. 

" There follows a mist and a weeping rain, 
And life is never the same again." 

In one sense, sorrow can never be forgotten. The 
cares of a long busy life may supervene, but the 

183 



184 PB ACTIO AL RELIGION. 

memory of the first deep sorrows in early youth 
lives on in perpetual freshness as the little flowers 
live on beneath the cold snowdrifts through all the 
long winter. The old woman of ninety remembers 
her grief and sense of loss seventy years ago, when 
God took her first baby out of her bosom. We 
never can actually forget our sorrows, nor is it 
meant that we should do so. There is a way of 
remembering grief that is not wrong, that is not a 
mark of insubmission and that brings rich blessing 
to our hearts and lives ; there is a humanizing and 
fertilizing influence in sorrow rightly accepted, 
and " the memory of things precious keepeth 
warm the heart that once did fold thern." Rec- 
ollections of losses, if sweetened by faith, hope and 
love, are benedictions to the lives they overshadow. 
Indeed, they are poor who have never suffered and 
have none of sorrow's marks upon them ; they are 
poorer far who, having suffered, have forgotten 
their sufferings and bear in their lives no beauti- 
fying traces of the experiences of pain through 
which they have passed. 



" TVe turn unblessed from faces fresh with beauty, 
Unsoftened yet by fears, 
To those whose lines are chased by pain and duty 
And know the touch of tears. 



THE DUTY OF FORGETTING SORROW, 185 

" The heart whose chords the gentle hand of sadness 
Has touched in minor strain 
Is filled with gracious joys, and knows a gladness 
All others seek in vain. 

" How poor a life where pathos tells no story, 
Whose pathways reach no shrine, 
Which, free from suffering, misses, too, the glory 
Of sympathies divine !" 

Yet there is a way of remembering sorrow which 
brings no blessing, no enrichment — which does not 
soften the heart nor add beauty to the life. There 
is an insubmissive remembering which brings no 
joy, which keeps the heart bitter, which shuts out 
the sunshine, which broods over losses and trials. 
Only evil can result from such memory of grief. 
In a sense, we ought to forget our sorrow. We 
certainly ought not to stop in the midst of our 
duties and turn aside and sit down by the graves 
of our losses, staying there while the tides of busy 
life sweep on. We should leave our sorrows behind 
us while we go on reverently, faithfully and quietly 
in our appointed way. 

There are many people, however, who have not 
learned this lesson ; they live perpetually in the 
shadows of the griefs and losses of their bygone 
days. Nothing could be more unwholesome or more 
untrue to the spirit of Christian faith than such a 



186 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

course. What would be said or thought of the 
man who should build a house for himself out of 
black stones, paint all the walls black, hang black 
curtains over the dark-stained windows, put black 
carpets on every floor, festoon the chambers with 
funereal crape, have only sad pictures on the walls 
and sad books on the shelves, and should have no 
lovely plants growing and no sweet flowers bloom- 
ing anywhere about his home? Would we not 
look upon such a man with pity as one into whose 
soul the outer darkness had crept, eclipsing all the 
beauty of life ? 

Yet that is just the way some people do live. 
They build for their souls houses just like that; 
they have memories that let all the bright and 
joyous things flow away while they retain all the 
sad and bitter things; they forget the pleasant 
incidents and experiences, the happy hours, the 
days that came laden with gladness as ships come 
from distant shores with cargoes of spices ; but 
there has been no painful event in all their life 
whose memory is not kept ever vivid. They will 
talk for hours of their griefs and bereavements in 
the past, dwelling with a strange morbid pleasure 
on each sad incident. They keep the old wounds 
ever unhealed in their hearts ; they keep continu- 



THE DUTY OF FORGETTING SORROW. 187 

ally in sight pictures and reminiscences of all their 
lost joys, but none of the joys that are not lost; 
they forget all their ten thousand blessings in the 
abiding recollection of the two or three sorrows 
that have come amid the multitudinous and unre- 
membered joys. 

Tennyson's Rizpah says, "The night has crept 
into my heart, and begun to darken my eyes." So 
it is with these people who live perpetually in 
the shadows and glooms of their own sorrows. 
The darkness creeps into their souls, and all the 
joyous brightness passes out of their lives, until 
their very vision becomes so stained that they can 
no more even discern the glad and lovely colors in 
God's universe. 

Few perversions of life could be sadder than this 
dwelling ever in the glooms and the shadows of past 
griefs. It is the will of God that we should turn 
our eyes away from our sorrows, that we should let 
the dead past bury its dead, while we go on with 
reverent earnestness to the new duties and the new 
joys that await us. By standing and weeping over 
the grave where it is buried we cannot get back 
what we have lost. When David's child was dead, 
he dried his tears and went at once to God's house 
and worshiped, saying, " Now he is dead, wherefore 



188 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

should I fast ? Can I bring him back again ? I 
shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." 
Instead of weeping over the grave where his dead 
was not, he turned his eyes forward toward the 
glory in which his child was waiting for him, and 
began with new ardor to press toward that home. 
He turned all the pressure of his grief into the 
channels of holy living. That is the way every 
believer in Christ should treat his sorrows. Weep- 
ing inconsolably beside a grave can never give back 
love's vanished treasure. Nor can any blessing 
come out of such sadness. It does not make the 
heart any softer ; it develops no feature of Christ- 
likeness in the life : it only embitters our present 
joys and stunts the growth of all beautiful things. 
The graces of the heart are like flower-plants : they 
grow well only in the sunshine. 

There was a mother who lost by death a lovely 
daughter. For a long time the mother had been a 
consistent Christian, but when her child died she 
refused to be comforted. Her pastor and other 
Christian friends sought by tender sympathy to 
draw her thoughts away from her grief, yet all 
their effort was vain. She would look at nothing 
but her sorrow; she spent a portion of nearly 
every day beside the grave where her dead was 



THE DUTY OF FORGETTING SORROW. 189 

buried ; she would listen to no words of consola- 
tion ; she would not lift an eye toward the heaven 
into which her child had gone ; she went back no 
more to the sanctuary, where in the days of her 
joy she had loved to worship ; she shut out of her 
heart every conception of God's love and kindness 
and thought of him only as the powerful Being 
who had torn her sweet child away from her 
bosom. Thus dwelling in the darkness of incon- 
solable grief, the joy of her religion left her. 
Hope's bright visions no longer cheered her, and 
her heart grew cold and sick with despair. She 
refused to quit her sorrow and to go on to new 
joys and toward the glory in which for Christian 
faith all earth's lost things wait. 

There was another mother who also lost a child 
— one of the rarest and sweetest children that God 
ever sent to this earth. Never was a heart more 
completely crushed than was the heart of this be- 
reft mother, yet she did not, like the other woman, 
sit down in the gloom and dwell there ; she did not 
shut out the sunshine and thrust away the blessing 
of comfort. She recognized her Father's hand in 
the grief that had fallen so heavily upon her, and 
bowed in sweet acquiescence to his will ; she opened 
her heart to the glorious truth of the immortal life, 



190 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

and was comforted by the simple faith that her 
child was with Christ. She remembered, too, that 
she had duties to the living, and turned away from 
the grave where her little one slept in such secur- 
ity, requiring no more any service of earthly affec- 
tion, to minister to those who still lived and needed 
her care and love. The result was that her life 
grew richer and more beautiful beneath its baptism 
of sore grief. She came from the deep shadow a 
lovelier Christian, and her home and a whole com- 
munity shared the blessing which she had found in 
her sorrow. 

It is easy to see which of these two ways of en- 
during sorrow is the true one. We should forget 
what we have suffered. The joy set before us 
should shine upon our souls as the sun shines 
through clouds, glorifying them. We should 
cherish sacredly and tenderly the memory of our 
Christian dead, but should train ourselves to think 
of them as in the home of the blessed with Christ, 
safely folded, waiting for us. Thus the bright and 
blessed hopes of immortality should fill us with 
tranquility and healthy gladness as we move over 
the waves of trial. 

" He taketh that we may for ever keep : 
All that makes life most beautiful and deep, 



THE DUTY OF FORGETTING SORROW. 191 

Our dearest hopes, by sorrow glorified, 
Beneath his everlasting wings abide ; 
For oh, it is our one true need to find 
Earth's vanished bliss in heavenly glory shrined." 

We should remember that the blessings which 
have gone away are not all that God has for us. 
This summer's flow r ers will all fade by and by 
when winter's cold breath smites them — we shall 
not be able to find one of them in the fields or 
gardens during the long, cold, dreary months to 
come — yet we shall know all the while that God 
has other flowers preparing, just as fragrant and as 
lovely as those which have perished. Spring will 
come again, and under its warm breath the earth 
will be covered once more with floral beauty as rich 
as that which faded in the autumn. So the joys 
that have gone from our homes and our hearts are 
not the only joys ; God has others in store just as 
rich as those we have lost, and in due time he will 
give us these to fill our emptied hands. 

One of the worst dangers of inconsolable sorrow 
is that it may lead us to neglect our duty to the liv- 
ing in our mourning for the dead. This we should 
never do. God does not desire us to give up our 
work because our hearts are broken. We may not 
even pause long with our sorrows ; we may not sit 



192 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

down beside the graves of our dead and linger there, 
cherishing our grief. " Let the dead bury their 
dead," said the Master to one who wished to bury 
his father and then follow him ; " but come thou 
and follow me." Not even the tender offices of 
love might detain him who was called to the high- 
er service. The lesson is for all, and for all time. 
Duty ever presses, and we have scarcely laid our 
dead away out of cur sight before its earnest calls 
that will not be denied are sounding in our ears. 

A distinguished general related this pathetic in- 
cident of his own experience in our civil war. The 
general's son was a lieutenant of battery. An as- 
sault was in progress. The father was leading his 
division in a charge ; as he pressed on in the field 
suddenly his eye was caught by the sight of a dead 
battery-officer lying just before him. One glance 
showed him it was his own son. His fatherly im- 
pulse was to stop beside the dear form and give vent 
to his grief, but the duty of the moment demanded 
that he should press on in the charge ; so, quickly 
snatching one hot kiss from the dead lips, he has- 
tened away, leading his command in the assault. 

Ordinarily the pressure is not so intense, and we 
can pause longer to weep and do honor to the mem- 
ory of our dead. Yet in all sorrow the principle is 



THE DUTY OF FORGETTING SORROW. 193 

the same. God does not desire us to waste our life 
in tears. We are to put our grief into new energy of 
service. Sorrow should make us more reverent, more 
earnest, more useful. God's work should never be 
allowed to suffer while we stop to weep. The fires 
must still be kept burning on the altar, and the 
worship must go on. The work in the household, 
in the school, in the store, in the field, must be 
taken up again — the sooner, the better. Ofttimes, 
indeed, the death of one in the circle is a divine 
voice calling the living to new duty. Thus, when 
a father dies, the mother is ordained to double re- 
sponsibility ; if there is a son of thoughtful age, 
his duty is not bitter grieving, but prompt taking 
up of the work that has fallen from the father's 
dead hands. When our friends are taken from us, 
our bereavement is a call, not to bitter weeping, but 
to new duty. 

" It bids us do the work that they laid down — 

Take up the song where they broke off the strain ; 
So journeying till we reach the heavenly town 
Where are laid up our treasures and our crown, 
And our lost loved ones will be found again." 

Sometimes it is care only that is laid down when 
death comes, as when a mother puts her baby 

13 



194 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

away into the grave; no work drops out of the 
little hands for the mother to take up. But may 
we not then say that, since God has emptied her 
hands of their own care and duty, he has some 
other work for them to do? He has set them 
free from their own tasks that with their trained 
skill and their enriched sympathies they may 
serve others. 

In a sick-room there was a little rosebush in a 
pot in the window 7 . There was only one rose on 
the bush, and its face was turned full toward the 
light. This fact was noticed and spoken of, when 
one said that the rose would look no other way but 
toward the light. Experiments had been made with 
it ; it had been turned away from the window, its 
face toward the gloom of the interior, but in a little 
time it would resume its old position. With won- 
derful persistence it refused to face the darkness and 
insisted on ever looking toward the light. 

The flower has its lesson for us. We should 
never allow ourselves to face toward life's glooms ; 
we should never sit down in the shadows of 
any sorrow and let the night darken over us into 
the gloom of despair; we should turn our faces 
away toward the light and quicken every energy 
for braver duty and truer, holier service. Grief 



THE DUTY OF FORGETTING SORROW. 195 

should always make us better and give us new 
skill and power ; it should make our hearts softer, 
our spirits kindlier, our touch more gentle ; it 
should teach us its holy lessons, and we should 
learn them, and then go on with sorrow's sacred 
ordination upon us to new love and better service. 
It is thus, too, that lonely hearts find their 
sweetest, richest comfort. Sitting down to brood 
over our sorrows, the darkness deepens about us 
and our little strength changes to weakness ; but if 
we turn away from the gloom and take up the tasks 
of comforting and helping others, the light will 
come again and we shall grow strong. 

" When all our hopes are gone, 
"lis well our hands must still keep toiling on 

For others' sake ; 
For strength to bear is found in duty done, 
And he is blest indeed who learns to make 
The joy of others cure his own heartache." 



XVIII. 

PEOPLE WHO FAIL. 

" Not many lives, but only one, have we — 

One, only one. 
How sacred that one life should ever be, 

That narrow span, 
Day after day filled up with blessed toil, 
Hour after hour still bringing in new spoil !" 

BONAR. 

FT^HEKE are many people who fail. Yet there 
are two standards by which success and failure 
may be measured : there is the world's standard, 
and there is God's. Many whom men set down 
as having failed are successful in the higher sense, 
while many of earth's vaunted successes are really 
complete and terrible failures. 

If we are wise, we will seek to know life's reali- 
ties, and will not be fooled by its appearances. True 
success must be something which will not perish in 
earth's wreck or decay, something which will not 
be torn out of our hands in the hour of death, 
something which will last over into the eternal 

196 



PEOPLE WHO FAIL. 197 

years. No folly can be so great as that which 
gives all life's energies to the building up of some- 
thing, however beautiful it may be, which must 
soon be torn down, and which cannot possibly be 
carried beyond the grave. 

The real failures in life are not those which are 
registered in commercial agencies and reported as 
bankruptcies, nor those whose marks are the decay 
of earthly fortune, descent in the social scale, the 
breaking down of worldly prosperity, or any of 
those signs by which men rate one another. A man 
may fail in these ways, and, as Heaven sees him, 
his path may be like the shining light, growing in 
brightness all the time. His heart may remain 
pure and his hands clean through all his earthly 
misfortunes. He may be growing all the while in 
the elements of true manhood. In the autumn 
days the stripping off of the leaves uncovers the 
nests of the birds ; and for many a man the strip- 
ping away of the leaves of earthly prosperity is the 
disclosing to him of the soul's true nest and home in 
the bosom of God. We cannot call that life a fail- 
ure which, though losing money and outward show, 
is itself growing every day nobler, stronger, Christ- 
lier. It matters little what becomes of one's cir- 
cumstances if meanwhile the man himself is pros- 



198 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

pering. Circumstances are but the scaffolding amid 
which the building rises. 

The real failures are those whose marks are in 
the life itself and in the character. A man pros- 
pers in the world. He grows rich. He gathers 
luxuries and the appointments of wealth about him 
instead of the plain circumstances amid which he 
spent his early days. The cottage is exchanged for 
a mansion ; he is a millionaire ; he has wide influ- 
ence ; men wait at his door to ask favors of him ; 
he is sought and courted by the great ; his name is 
everywhere known. But the heart which nestled 
in purity under the home-made jacket has not 
retained its purity under rich broadcloth : it has 
become the home of pride, ambition, unrest, unholy 
schemes, and of much that is corrupt and evil ; his 
knee bends no more in prayer as in childhood it 
was taught to bend at a mother's knee ; his life is 
stained with many sins ; his character has lost its 
former innocence and loveliness. His circumstances 
have advanced from poverty to wealth, but the 
man himself dwelling within the circle of the 
circumstances has deteriorated. What could be 
sadder than the following picture? — 

" Where is the promise of the years 
Once written on my brow, 



PEOPLE WHO FAIL. 199 

Ere errors, agonies and fears 
Brought with them all that speaks in tears — 
Ere I had sunk beneath my peers? 
Where sleeps that promise now ? 

" Naught lingers to redeem those hours 
Still, still to memory sweet ; 
The flowers that bloom in sunny bowers 
Are withered all, and evil towers 
Supreme above her sister-powers 
Of sorrow and deceit. 

" I look along the columned years 

And see life's riven fane 
Just where it fell amid the jeers 
Of scornful lips whose mocking sneers 
For ever hiss within mine ears 

To break the sleep of pain. 

li I can but own my life is vain — 

A desert void of peace. 
I missed the goal I sought to gain, 
I missed the measure of the strain 
That lulls fame's fever in the brain 

And bids earth's tumult cease. 

" Myself! Alas for theme so poor — 
A theme but rich in fear ! 
I stand a wreck on error's shore, 
A spectre not within the door, 
A homeless shadow evermore, 

An exile lingering here." , 

There is a story of a man who built his enemy 
into the wall of the castle he was erecting — made a 



200 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

tomb for him there, and buried him alive in the 
heart of the magnificent pile he was setting up. 
That is what many men do with their souls in their 
earthly prosperity : they bury them in the heart of 
their successes. It is a splendid monument which 
they rear; but when it is finished it is the mau- 
soleum of their manhood. Shall we call that true 
success which erects a pile of earthly grandeur to 
dazzle men's eyes while it strangles a man's spiritual 
life and forfeits him the divine favor and a home in 
heaven ? 

There is no doubt that God creates every human 
soul for a high destiny ; he has a plan for every 
life, and that plan in every case is noble and 
beautiful. There is no blind fate which predestines 
any soul to failure and perdition. No man is born 
in this world who may not make his life a true 
success and attain at last to coronation in heaven. 
Every soul is endowed at creation for a noble 
career. It may not be for a brilliant career, with 
honor and fame and great power ; but there is no 
one born who is not so gifted that with his endow- 
ments he may fill his own place and do his allotted 
work. And there can be no nobleness higher than 
this. Then to every one come the opportunities by 
which he may achieve the success for which he was 



PEOPLE WHO FAIL. 201 

born. No man can ever say he had no chance to 
be noble; the trouble is with the man himself. 
Opportunities offer, but he does not embrace them, 
and while he delays they pass on and away, to 
return no more ; for " lost chance comes not again." 
Opportunities are doors opened to beauty and bless- 
ing, but they are not held open for laggards, and in 
a moment they are shut, never to be opened again. 

Both in original endowments and in opportuni- 
ties every life is furnished for success. " But men 
are weak and sinful, and are unable to make 
their lives noble." True, but here comes in the 
blessed secret of divine help. No one need ever 
fail, for God is with men — with every one who 
does not thrust him away — and he is ready to put 
his own strength under human infirmity, so that 
the weakest may overcome and rise into beauty and 
strength. No man is foredoomed to failure; there 
is no man who may not make his life a true 
success. Those who fail, fail because they will not 
build their life after the pattern shown them in the 
mount, because they do not use the endowments 
which God has bestowed upon them, because they 
reject the opportunities offered to them, or because 
they leave God out of their life and enter the 
battle only in their own strength. 



202 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

The saddest thing in this world is the wreck of 
a life made for God and for immortality, but failing 
of all the high ends of its existence and lying in ruin 
at the last, when it is too late to begin anew. The 
poet's lines portray this sadness in vivid colors : 

" Upon the hour when I was born 

God said, 'Another man shall be;' 
And the great Maker did not scorn 

Out of himself to fashion me. 
He sunned me with his ripening looks, 

And heaven's rich instincts in me grew 
As effortless as woodland nooks 

Send violets up and paint them blue. 

" Men think it is an awful sight 

To see a soul just set adrift 
On that drear voyage from whose night 

The ominous shadows never lift ; 
But 'tis more awful to behold 

A helpless infant newly born, 
Whose little hands unconscious hold 

The keys of darkness and of morn. 

" Mine held them once ; I flung away 
Those keys that might have open set 
The golden sluices of the day, 

But clutch the keys of darkness yet. 
I hear the reapers singing go 

Into God's harvest ; I, that might 
With them have chosen, here below 

Grope shuddering at the gates of night. 



PEOPLE WHO FAIL. 203 

" O glorious youth, that once wast mine ! 

O high ideal ! all in vain 
Ye enter at this ruined shrine 

Whence worship ne'er shall rise again; 
The bat and owl inhabit here, 

The snake nests in the altar-stone, 
The sacred vessels moulder near, 

The image of the God is gone." 

To the readers of this book this chapter is cau- 
tionary. The paths that lead to failure begin far 
back and slope down, usually in very gradual and 
almost imperceptible decline, toward the fatal end. 
The work of the Christian teacher is not with those 
who have hopelessly failed, wrecked all and gone 
down into the dark waters — these are beyond his 
warning voice and his helping hand — but he should 
seek in time to save from failure those whose faces 
are just turning toward its sunless blackness. 

It may be that these words shall come to one 
whose feet are already set in paths of peril. There 
are many such paths, and so disguised are they by 
the enemy of men's souls that ofttimes to the un- 
wary they appear harmless. They are flower- 
strewn. They begin at first in very slight and in 
only momentary deviations from the narrow path 
of duty and of safety. Young people should be 
honest with themselves in these matters. The ques- 



204 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

tion at first is not, " What are you doing now ?" but, 
" Which way are you facing ? What are the tend- 
encies of your life?" If the compass register 
falsely by but a hair's breadth when the ship puts 
out to sea, it will carry her a thousand miles out of 
her course a few days hence, and may wreck her. 
The slightest wrong tendency of life in early youth, 
unless corrected, will lead at length far away from 
God and from hope. Montaigne says : 

" Habit at first is but a silken thread, 
Fine as the light- winged gossamers that sway 
In the warm sunbeams of a summer's day ; 

A shallow streamlet rippling o'er its bed ; 

A tiny sapling ere its roots are spread ; 
A yet-unhardened thorn upon the spray ; 
A lion's whelp that hath not scented prey ; 

A little smiling child obedient led. 
Beware ! That thread may bind thee as a chain ; 

That streamlet gather to a fatal sea ; 

That sapling spread into a gnarled tree ; 
That thorn, grown hard, may wound and give thee pain ; 

That playful whelp his murderous fangs reveal ; 

That child, a giant, crush thee 'neath his heel." 

We should always deal frankly with ourselves. 
We must not fancy that we are so different from 
other people that what is perilous for them is yet safe 
enough for us. It is a sacred and most momentous 
responsibility which is put into our hand when our 



PEOPLE WHO FAIL. 205 

life is entrusted to us. Life is God's most wonder- 
ful gift. Then, it is not our own, to do with as we 
please. It belongs to God and is but a trust in our 
hands, as when one puts into the hand of another 
a precious gem or some other costly and valuable 
possession to be carried amid dangers and delivered 
in safety at the end of the journey. 

God has given us our life, and there are two 
things which he requires us to do with it. First, 
we are to keep it. Enemies will assail us and try 
to wrest from us the sacred jewel, but we are to 
guard and defend it at whatever cost. Then, mere 
keeping is not all of our obligation. The man with 
the one talent seems to have kept the talent safely 
enough : he wrapped it up and laid it away in a 
secure place. It did not gather rust ; no one robbed 
him of it. When his master returned he presented 
it to him safe and unspotted. But he had done only 
part of his duty, and was condemned because he had 
not used his talent and thereby increased its value. 
The lesson is plain. It is not enough to guard our 
soul from stain and from robbery : we must also 
make such use of it as shall bless the world and 
develop our life itself into ripeness of beauty and 
of power. Our endowments come to us only as pos- 
sibilities, powers folded up in buds or germs which 



206 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

we must draw out by use and culture. We are re- 
sponsible not merely for guarding and keeping the 
possibilities which God puts into our lives, but also 
for developing these possibilities until the talents 
multiply into many, until the little seeds grow 
into strong and fruitful plants or trees. 

There are, then, two lines of possible failure. 
We may not guard our life from the world's 
corrupting influence, nor defend it from the enemies 
that would filch from us the precious jewel. All 
who yield to temptations and fall into sin's slavery 
fail in this way. Then, we may neglect to make the 
most of our life, developing its possibilities, culti- 
vating it to its highest capacities for beauty and 
using it to its last degree of power in doing good. 
Thus indolence leads to failure. A young person 
who has good mental powers and is too slothful 
and inert to study and thus educate, or draw out, 
the possibilities of his endowment, is failing in life 
just so far as his indolence is leaving his talent 
buried in his brain. The same is true of all the 
capacities of life. The lazy man is a failure. 
He may be richly gifted and may have the largest 
and best opportunities, but he has no energy to do 
the work that comes to his hand ; then, while he 
lingers, indolent and self-indulgent, the opportuni- 



PEOPLE WHO FAIL. 207 

ties pass on and pass away, to return no more, and 
the powers of his being meanwhile die within him. 
He comes to the end of his life without having left 
in the world any worthy record of his existence, 
anything to show that he ever lived, and with only 
a shriveled soul to carry up to God's bar. 

No other curses in the Bible are more bitter than 
those upon uselessness. A man made for a great 
mission, and magnificently endowed for it, who 
does nothing with his life, even though he do not 
yield to sin and turn the forces of his being into 
courses of evil, is still a terrible failure. Useless- 
ness is failure. The penalty upon such malfeasance 
in duty is loss of unused capacities, the wasting 
and shriveling of the powers which might have 
been developed to such grandeur and trained to 
such efficiency and influence. The eye unused 
loses its power to see ; the tongue unused becomes 
dumb ; the heart unused grows cold and hard ; the 
brain unused withers to imbecility. 

To save our lives, then, from at least some 
degree of failure, it is necessary that we not only 
keep ourselves unspotted from the world, but also 
that we make the fullest possible use of all the 
powers God has given us. Hence every young 
person who would save his life from failure must 



208 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

begin with the bright, golden days now passing, 
and make each one of them beautiful with the 
beauty of fidelity and earnestness. A wasted youth 
is a bad beginning for a successful life. We have 
not a moment to lose, for the time allotted to us is 
not an instant too long for the tasks and duties 
which God has set for us. 

We shall have no second chance if we fail in our 
first. Some things we may do over if we fail in 
our first or second attempt, but we can live our life 
only once. To fail in our first probation is to lose 

all. 

" 'Tis not for man to trifle : life is brief, 

And sin is here ; 
Our age is but the falling of a leaf, 

A dropping tear. 
We have no time to sport away the hours ; 
All must be earnest in a world like ours. y 



XIX. 

LIVING VICTORIOUSLY. 

" The cross for only a day, 
The crown for ever and aye — 
The one for a night that will soon be gone, 
The one for eternity's glorious morn. 

" The cross — that I'll cheerfully bear, 
Nor sorrow for loss or care ; 
For a moment only the pain and the strife, 
But through endless ages the crown of life/' 

IFE is conflict. Every good thing lies beyond 
"^ a battlefield, and we must fight our way to it. 
There must be struggle to get it. This is true in 
physical life; from infancy to old age existence is a 
fight with infirmity and disease. In mental life 
the same is true. Education is a long conflict; 
the powers of the mind have to fight their way to 
strength and development. So it is in spiritual 
life; enemies throng the path and contest every 
step of progress. No one ever attains to beauty 
and nobleness of character save through long and 
sore struggle. 

14 209 



210 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

Many of earth's great historic battlefields are 
now spots of quiet peace. Once men met there in 
deadly strife — arms clashed, cannon thundered, the 
air was filled with the shouts of contending armies 
and the groans of the wounded and dying, and the 
ground was covered with the dead — but now, in 
summer days, the grass waves on the once bloody 
field, sweet flowers bloom, harvests yellow to ripe- 
ness, children play and the air is full of bird-songs 
and the voices of peace. But he who walks over 
the spot is continually reminded of the terrible 
struggle which occurred there in the bygone days. 

We look upon men and women who have attained 
high culture of mind and spirit. They are intelli- 
gent and educated ; they are well balanced in their 
faculties and symmetrical in their development; 
their character is strong and noble, showing all the 
features which belong to true manhood or true 
womanhood ; they are dignified in their deportment, 
calm and equable in their bearing; they are not 
hasty in speech nor impetuous in temper; their 
judgments are never rash ; they possess the quali- 
ties of patience, contentment and gentleness, com- 
bined with courage, righteousness and strength. 
When we look upon such people, we cannot but 
admire them and be fascinated by the culture and 



LIVING VICTORIOUSLY. 211 

the majesty and serenity of their lives. We are 
apt to think of them as highly favored in their 
original endowment and in their circumstances and 
experiences. 

But if we knew the story of these lives, we 
should see that where now we behold such ripe 
and beautiful character was once a battlefield. 
These men and women began just as all of us 
must begin — with their faculties undeveloped, 
their powers undisciplined and their lives un- 
cultured. They had their hard battles with evil 
in themselves and with evil about them; they 
grew into intelligence through long and severe 
mental training and years of diligent study ; they 
attained their splendid self-control through painful 
experiences of conflict with their tongues, their tem- 
pers, their original impetuosity, their many innate 
propensities to evil ; their beauty of Christian char- 
acter they reached through the submission of their 
own wills to the will of Christ and of their selfish- 
ness and natural resentment and other evil affections 
and passions to the sway of the spirit of divine love. 
They were not always what now they are. This 
noble beauty which we so admire is the fruit of 
long years of sore struggle, the harvest which has 
been brought to ripeness by the frosts of autumn, 



212 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

the snows and storms of winter and the rains and 
sunshine of spring. Back of the calmness, the 
refinement, the strength and the charming culture 
which we see is a story of conflict, with many a 
defeat and many a wounding, and of stern self- 
discipline, with pain, toil and tears. 

We all admire the character of Saint John as it 
is drawn for us in the New Testament. It seems 
almost perfect in its affection aten ess, its gentleness, 
its peacefulness. Yet John was not always the 
saintly man of the Gospel. There is no doubt 
that he attained this beauty of character, under 
the transforming influence of Christ's love, through 
just such sore conflict and self-discipline as all of 
us must endure to attain Christlikeness. A writer 
compares the character of this man of love to an 
extinct volcano he had visited. Where once the 
crater yawned there is now a verdurous cuplike 
hollow on the mountain-summit; where once the 
fierce fires had burned lies now a still, clear pool 
of water, looking up like an eye to the beautiful 
heavens above, its banks covered with sweet flow- 
ers. Says Dr. Culross, speaking of the beloved 
apostle and referring to this old crater now so 
beautiful, "It is an apt parable of this man. 
Naturally and originally volcanic, capable of pro- 



LIVING VICTORIOUSLY. 213 

foundest passion and daring, he is new-made by 
grace, till in his old age he stands out in calm 
grandeur of character and depth and largeness of 
soul, with all the gentlenesses and graces of Christ 
adorning him — a man, as I image him to myself, 
with a face so noble that kings might do him hom- 
age, and so sweet that children would run to him 
for his blessing." 

So we learn the story of all noble, cultured char- 
acter. It is reached only through struggle; it is 
not natural, but is the fruit of toil and conquest; 
it bears the marks and scars of many a conflict. 
We often hear people say they would give large 
sums to have such a person's contentment, or self- 
control, or sweetness of disposition, or submissive- 
ness to God's will, or power of giving sympathy. 
These are things that cannot be bought, and that 
cannot be learned in any school. Such qualities 
can be gotten only through victorious struggle 
during years of experience. 

We say that Christ gives his disciples this spirit- 
ual loveliness, that he renews their natures and 
transforms their lives, imprinting his own image 
upon them. This is true; if it were not, there 
could never be any hope of saintliness in any 
human life. Yet Christ does not produce this 



214 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

change in us merely by instantaneously printing 
his likeness upon our souls as the photographer 
prints one's picture on the glass in his camera. 
He works in us, but we must work out the beauty 
which he puts in germ into our hearts ; he helps 
us in every struggle, yet still we must struggle ; he 
never fights the battle for us, although he is ever 
near to help us. Thus the noble things of spirit- 
ual attainment lie away beyond the hills and the 
rivers, and we must toil far through strife and 
pain before we can get them. The old life must 
be crucified that the new life may emerge. George 
MacDonald has put this lesson in quaint yet strik- 
ing way in one of his poems : 

" i Traveler, what lies over the hill ? 
Traveler, tell to me ; 
I am only a child : from the window-sill 
Over I cannot see.' 

" ' Child, there's a valley over there, 
Pretty and woody and shy, 
And a little brook that says, " Take care, 
Or I'll drown you by and by." ' 

" 'And what comes next ?' — ( A lonely moor 
Without a beaten way, 
And gray clouds sailing slow before 
A wind that will not stay.' 



LIVING VICTORIOUSLY. 215 

" 'And then V — ' Dark rocks and yellow sand, 
And a moaning sea beside/ — 
'And then ?' — c More sea, more sea, more land, 
And rivers deep and wide.' 

" 'And then ?' — ' Oh, rock and mountain and vale, 
Rivers and fields and men, 
Over and over — a weary tale — 
And round to your home again/ 

" ' Is that the end ? It is weary at best.' — 
' No, child ; it is not the end. 
On summer eves, away in the west, 
You will see a stair ascend, 

" ' Built of all colors of lovely stones — 
A stair up into the sky, 
Where no one is weary, and no one moans 
Or wishes to be laid by.' 

" ' I will go !' — ' But the steps are very steep ; 
If you would climb up there, 
You must lie at its foot, as still as sleep, 
And be a step of the stair 

" ' For others to put their feet on you 
To reach the stones high-piled, 
Till Jesus comes and takes you too, 
And leads you up, my child.' " 

The duty of life is, then, to be victorious. 
Every good thing, every noble thing, must be 
won. Heaven is for those who overcome ; not to 
overcome is to fail. In war, to be defeated is to 
become a slave. To be vanquished in the battle 



216 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

with sin is to become sin's slave ; to be overcome 
by the antagonisms of life is to lose all. But in 
the Christian life defeat is never a necessity. Over 
all the ills and enmities of this world we may be 
victorious. 

Moreover, every Christian life ought to be vic- 
torious. Jesus said, " In the world ye shall have 
tribulation : but be of good cheer ; I have over- 
come the world." Nothing will do for a gospel for 
sinners which leaves any enmity unconquered, any 
foe unvanquished. Saint Paul, in speaking of the 
trials and sufferings that beset the Christian — tribu- 
lation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, sword 
— asked, u Shall these separate us from the love of 
Christ?" That is, "Can these evils and antago- 
nisms ever be so great that we cannot overcome 
them and be carried still in Christ's bosom ?" He 
answers his own question by saying triumphantly, 
"Nay, in all these things we are more than con- 
querors through Him that loved us." We need 
never be defeated ; we may always be victorious. 
We may be even " more than conquerors " — tri- 
umphant, exultant conquerors. " Whatsoever is 
born of God overcometh the world ; and this is 
the victory that overcometh the world, even our 
faith." 



LIVING VICTORIOUSLY. 217 

The ideal Christian life is one, therefore, which 
is victorious over all enmity, opposition, difficulty 
and suffering. This is the standard which we 
should all set for ourselves; this is the pattern 
shown us in the holy mount after which we should 
seek always to fashion our life. We need never ex- 
pect to find a path running along on a level plain, 
amid sweet flowers, beneath the shade of the trees. 

" ' Does the road wind up hill all the way f — 
' Yes, to the end/ — 
1 Will the day's journey take the whole long day 7 — 
' From morn to night, my friend.' " 

Of course there will be Elims in the long way, 
for God is very loving, but the road will always be 
steep and hard. Yet there will never come an ex- 
perience in which it will not be wrong for us to be 
defeated. Grace has lost none of its power since 
New-Testament days. Surely the poor stumbling 
life so many of us live is not the best possible liv- 
ing for us if we are true Christians. Our Master is 
able to help us to something far better. 

Take temper, the control of the emotion of anger, 
the government of the tongue. Is there any real 
reason, any fatal necessity, why we should always 
be easily provoked, swept away by every slight 
cause into unseemly passion and into unchristian 



218 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

speech ? No doubt Scripture is true to experience 
when it affirms that the taming of the tongue is 
harder than the taming of any kind of beast or 
bird or serpent. No doubt the control of the 
tongue is the hardest victory to be achieved in 
all the range of self-discipline, for inspiration 
affirms that the man who has gotten the complete 
victory over his speech is a perfectly disciplined 
man, "able also to bridle the whole body." Yet 
victory even here is not impossible. The grace 
of God is sufficient to enable us to live sweetly 
amid all provocation and irritation, to check all 
feelings of resentment, to give the soft answer 
which will turn away wrath, and to choke back 
all rising bitterness before it shall break into a 
storm of passion. Jesus never lost his temper nor 
spoke unadvisedly, and he is able to help us to live 
in the same victorious way. 

This is the ideal life for a child of God. We 
may be more than conquerors. It is not an easy 
conquest that we may win in a day ; in many lives 
it must be the work of years. Still, it is possible, 
with Christ to help ; and we should never relax our 
diligence nor withdraw from the battle until we are 
victorious. He who in the strength of Christ has 
acquired this power of self-control has reached a 



LIVIXG VICTORIOUSLY. 219 

sublime rank in spiritual culture. The world may 
sneer at the man who bears injury and wrong with- 
out resentment, without anger, but in God's eyes he 
is a spiritual hero. 

" Call no man weak who can a grievance brook 
And hold his peace against a red-hot word, 
Nor him a coward who averts his look 

For fear some sleeping passion may be stirred. 

" But call him weak who tramples not in dust 
Those evil things that fascinate the heart ; 
Who fears to give his moral foe a thrust 
And springs from duty with a coward start ; 

" Who grapples not with one defiant sin ; 

Whose ease and pride and pleasure keep the post. 
Where self is strong, weakest passions win ; 

Where self is weakest — there, the valiant host." 

Take trial of any kind — pain, misfortune, sor- 
row. Is it possible to live victoriously at this 
point of human experience ? Many fail to do so ; 
they succumb to every trial and are overwhelmed 
by every wave of grief or loss. Many do not 
make any effort to resist ; the faith of their creed, 
of their hymns, of their prayers, forsakes them, 
and they meet their troubles apparently as un- 
supported and unsustained as if they were not 
Christians at all. A novelist describes one in grief 
as he stands on the shore and gazes at the ship that 



220 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

is bearing away from him the object of his heart's 
devotion. In his absorbing anguish he does not 
observe that the tide is rising. It rolls over his 
feet, but he is unconscious of it. Higher and 
higher the waters rise — now to his knees, now to 
his loins, now to his breast. But all his thought 
is on the receding ship, and he is oblivious to the 
swelling of the waves, and at length they flow over 
his head and he is swept down to death. This is a 
picture of many of earth's sufferers in sorrow or in 
misfortune. They are defeated and overborne ; the 
divine promises do not sustain them, because they 
lose all faith ; they hear the words, " Ye sorrow not, 
even as others which have no hope," and yet they 
do sorrow just as if they had no hope. 

But this is not the best that our religion can do 
for us. It is designed to give us complete victory 
in all trial. "As sorrowing yet always rejoicing" 
is the scriptural ideal for a Christian life. Christ 
has bequeathed his own peace to his believing ones. 
We know what his peace was ; it was never broken 
for a moment, though his sorrows and sufferings 
surpassed in bitterness anything this earth has ever 
known in any other sufferer. The same peace he 
offers to each one of his people in all trial. 

The artist painted life as a sea, wild, swept by 



LIVING VICTORIOUSLY. 221 

storms, covered with wrecks. In the midst of this 
troubled scene he painted a great rock rising out of 
the waves, and in the rock, above the reach of the 
billows, a cleft with herbage growing and flowers 
blooming, and in the midst of the herbage and the 
flowers a dove sitting quietly on her nest. It is a 
picture of the Christian's heritage of peace in 
tribulation. It is thus Christ would have us live 
in the world — in the midst of the sorest trials and 
adversities always victorious, always at peace. The 
secret of this victoriousness is faith — faith in the 
unchanging love of God, faith in the unfailing 
grace and help of Christ, faith in the immutable 
divine promises. If we but believe God and go 
forward ever resolute and unfaltering in duty, we 
shall always be more than conquerors. 



XX. 

SHUT IN. 

" A little bird I am, 

Shut from the fields of air, 
And in my cage I sit and sing 

To Him who placed me there, 
Well pleased a prisoner to be 
Because, my God, it pleases thee." 

Madame Guyon. 

TN a midsummer business-letter to a lady whose 
"^ pen writes many bright things for children's 
papers the writer, not knowing of her invalidism, 
expressed the hope that his correspondent might be 
enjoying a pleasant and restful vacation. In the 
allusion to this wish, in her reply, there was a 
touching pathos, though there was not a word of 
complaint. She wrote : " I am always an invalid, 
and my outing consists only in lying down in 
another place." She is one of the Lord's prisoners. 
Yet there is no gloom in her prison ; her faith fills 
it with brightness. It is a chamber of peace ; the 
voice of song is heard in it. Her " outing consists 
only in lying down in another place/' but always 

222 



SHUT IN. 223 

the Lord her Shepherd makes her " to lie down in 
green pastures." Nor is she cutoff from the joy 
of serving Christ, but is permitted in her quiet 
sanctuary to do many beautiful things for him, 
blessing many a life out in the sunshine by her 
loving ministry within her doors. She can sing 
again with Madame Guyon, 

" My cage confines me round : 

Abroad I cannot fly ; 
But, though my wing is closely bound, 

My heart's at liberty. 
My prison-walls cannot control 
The flight, the freedom, of my soul." 

There are many people who belong to the " shut- 
ins." They are found in fine city mansions and 
in quiet country homes, in the dwellings of the 
rich and in the cottages of the poor. They are 
invalids who because of their broken health cannot 
any longer run the race with the swift or fight the 
battle with the strong ; they have been wounded in 
the strife, and have fallen out of the ranks. Passers- 
by on the street sometimes see their faces at the 
window, white and bearing marks of suffering, but 
they no longer mingle with the hurrying throngs 
nor take their places with the busy toilers. They 
are " shut in." 



224 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

They represent many degrees of invalidism. 
Some of them are almost entirely helpless. Here 
is one who for many years has not lifted a hand 
nor moved a finger by her own volition ; here is 
one only partially powerless, unable to walk, but 
having the use of hands and arms ; another has 
not sufficient strength for any active out-door duty, 
but can move about the house and perform many 
a sweet ministry of love. Thus these " shut-ins " 
embrace all degrees of suffering and of helpless- 
ness, but they are alike in their inability to join 
the ranks of the busy workers without. They 
must stay in-doors ; in a sense, they are prisoners 
in this great bright world, no longer free to go 
where they would or to do what they earnestly 
crave to do. 

This book may find its way into the hands of 
some of these " shut-ins," and it ought to have its 
message for them. The message ought also to be 
one of cheer and gladness. I would like to write 
for such " prisoners of the Lord " a word that may 
carry comfort and strength, that may be to them 
like a little flower sent in from the outside, a token 
of sympathy laden also with fragrance from the 
garden of the Lord. 

In the account of the entering of Noah into the 



SHUT IN. 225 

ark, before the Flood came, we read that " the Lord 
shut him in." For quite a year Noah and his fam- 
ily were " shut-ins," but it must have been a com- 
fort for them to know that the shutting of the door 
was not accidental— that the Lord had done it. 
There was another comfort : it was very much bet- 
ter inside than outside. Without, there were great 
storms, wild torrents and terrible destruction. No 
man could live in the rushing waters. Within, 
there was perfect safety. Not a drop of rain 
dashed in; no wild tempest swept through the 
door. The ark was a chamber of peace floating 
quietly and securely in the midst of the most ter- 
rible ruin the world ever saw. The Lord's shut- 
ting in of his people was to save them. 

May we not say of every shut-in child of God, 
"The Lord shut him in"? What the Lord does 
for his own people can never be unkindness, what- 
ever it may seem to be. It is an infinite comfort, 
therefore, to a Christian who is kept within-doors 
by invalidism or other like cause to be able to say, 
" It was the Lord who shut me in." 

May we not go a step farther and say of such 
" shut-ins " that the Lord has shut them in because 
it is better for them to be within than without ? 
No doubt there is protection in such a condition. 

15 



226 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

These prisoners of the Lord are not exposed to the 
storms ; it is always warm and safe where they are. 
They are dwelling under the shadow of God's 
wing. They miss many of the struggles with 
temptation and many of the sterner conflicts of 
life by being shut in. The ark was guided by an 
unseen Hand over the trackless waters of the Del- 
uge. It had no rudder, no pilot, no sail, no chart, 
yet it struck no rock, was whelmed in no wild bil- 
lows, moved in no wrong course, and bore its 
" shut-ins " in safety to the shores of a new world. 
May we not say that in like manner all the " shut- 
ins " of God's people are God's peculiar care ? Are 
they not of those whom he gathers in his arms and 
carries in his bosom ? We are told that the Lord 
knoweth how to deliver the godly out of tempta- 
tion ; may we not say that one of the ways he de- 
livers from temptation is by shutting his people 
away from the rough blasts? No doubt many a 
soul has been saved from the evil influences of 
worldliness by being called from the midst of the 
excitements and strifes of active life into the quiet 
shelter of invalidism. The chamber of suffering 
proves a sanctuary rather than a prison. 

But there are other comforts. It is a great deal 
better to be shut in than to be shut out. There 



SHUT IN. 227 

are pictures of both classes in the New Testament. 
In one of the parables of our Lord the door was 
shut, and it excluded some who came too late to 
be admitted ; but the same door also shut in with 
Christ those who had entered in time. No condi- 
tion could be more suggestive of blessedness than 
to be shut in with the Master. The closed doors 
are pledge that there can be no interruption of the 
communion. Christ's "shut-ins" have abundant 
opportunity for loving fellowship with him. Their 
sick-rooms are not prisons, but Bethels where Christ 
comes to meet with them and to bless them. 

It is not strange, therefore, that many of the 
quiet rooms where Christ's disciples are shut in 
are places of great joy. Faith triumphs over pain. 
The darkness brings out the stars of promise, and 
they shine in radiant beauty. Because of infirmity 
the power of Christ rests in especial measure upon 
his suffering ones, and they are enabled to rejoice 
in their very tribulations. Their joy is rich and 
deep. It is not the rippling surface-happiness of 
those outside who have no pain and are free to 
go where they will and to do as they desire : it 
is heart-joy which does not depend upon external 
things, and is therefore unaffected by external ex- 
periences. There are fresh-water springs that bub- 



228 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

ble up beneath the edge of the sea ; the brackish 
tides roll over them, but they remain ever sweet 
and fresh. Like these springs are the fountains 
of Christian joy. Under the billows of trial and 
suffering they flow on unwasting and unembittered. 
Many Christian invalids become almost marvels of 
patience and peace as they are brought into living 
communion with Christ. They are never heard 
complaining; they believe in the love of God, 
submit themselves to his will, and take pain from 
his hand as confidently and sweetly as they take 
medicine from their trusted physicians ; their faces 
shine with the radiance of indwelling peace, and 
the joy of their hearts finds expression in words 
and songs of praise. Surely, to the angels, as 
they look down from their pure glory, the cham- 
bers in which many of Christ's " shut-ins" lie 
must appear as spots of bright beauty in this 
dark world. 

" Shut in by o'ermastering weakness 

From the world's ceaseless bustle and din — 
From sanctified, diligent purpose 

And noble endeavor shut in ; 
But never shut in from the spirit 

Of meekness, contentment and love 
That gathers and fashions life's jewels 

For chaplets of glory above. 



SHUT IN. 229 

" Shut in, but the Spirit commissioned 

The purpose divine to unfold 
Has graciously circled each letter 

With halos of ruby and gold. 
Wherever the sunshine of patience 

Is peacefully shining within 
The pencil of beauty seraphic 

Has written, in mercy, ' Shut in.' " 

We naturally suppose that when persons are laid 
aside by illness and shut away in quiet sick-rooms 
their work ceases and their usefulness is at an end. 
After that they are a burden to others instead of 
being helpers. So we would say. They require 
tending, watching, nursing; probably they have 
to be lifted by their friends and carried from chair 
to bed, from room to room, up and down stairs ; 
they can no longer take any part in the duty of the 
household nor perform any active service for the 
Master. We would say at first thought that they 
are no longer useful ; their old-time work has 
dropped from their hands, and others now have 
to do it. Yet we greatly mistake when we sup- 
pose they are no longer of any service : they have 
a ministry even in their suffering which in many 
cases exceeds in value their highest usefulness in 
their most active days. It is impossible to meas- 
ure the influence in a home, day after day, of a 



230 PEACTICAL RELIGION. 

patient, rejoicing Christian sufferer. There pours 
out from the sick-room of such a "shut-in" a 
spiritual warmth of love which diffuses itself 
through all the household life like a summer 
atmosphere, leaving benediction everywhere. 

It was my privilege to visit very often a Chris- 
tian young woman who for years was a sufferer. 
Much of the time her pain was excruciating — al- 
most unendurable ; but as I watched her from week 
to week I saw continually the putting forth of new 
spiritual beauties in her character. Her young life 
seemed to me like a lovely rose-bush in early sum- 
mer with its many opening buds, and pain was as 
the summer warmth that caused the buds to burst 
into full, rich beauty and fragrance. Every time 
I saw her some new feature of Christlikeness ap- 
peared in her life : another rose had opened into 
full bloom. In her last months there was no op- 
portunity for active service, yet I believe the good 
she wrought by her ministry of pain far surpassed 
that which she could have done in the same time 
with the busiest hands had she lived in painless 
health. By her suffering she touched the hearts 
of parents and friends and drew out their sympa- 
thy as they watched month after month beside her. 
These fruits of her pain will remain as permanent 



SHUT IN. 231 

enrichment of the characters of those who loved 
her. Another effect of her suffering was in the 
influence of her sweet patience. She never mur- 
mured ; her faith was never clouded for an instant ; 
she was gentle, thoughtful, joyous, even in the sor- 
est pain. Thus she was preaching perpetually ser- 
mons without words on the power of the love and 
grace of God, and thus became a blessing to every 
one who entered her room and looked upon her 
radiant face. 

From very humble life there comes this pathetic 
incident which illustrates the same truth : In a 
pottery there was a workman who had one small 
invalid child at home. The man wrought at his 
trade with exemplary fidelity. He managed, how- 
ever, to bear each evening to the bedside of his 
" wee lad " a flower, a bit of ribbon or a fragment 
of crimson glass — anything that would lie on the 
white counterpane and give color to the room. He 
never went home at night without something that 
would make the wan face light up with joy at his 
return. He never said that he loved his bov, and 
yet he went on patiently loving him until the whole 
shop had been drawn into real though unconscious 
fellowship with him. The workmen made curious 
little jars and cups, and painted diminutive pictures 



232 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

on them, and burnt them in their kilns. One 
brought some fruit and another some engravings 
in a scrapbook. Not one of them whispered a 
word, for this solemn thing was not to be talked 
about. They put their little gifts in the old man's 
hat, and he found them there and understood it all. 
The entire pottery-full of men of rather coarse 
fibre by nature grew quiet as the months passed, 
becoming gentle and kind ; some dropped swearing 
as the weary look on their patient fellow-worker's 
face told them beyond mistake that the inevitable 
shadow was drawing nearer. 

Every day some one did a piece of work for him, 
so that he could come later and go earlier. And 
when the bell tolled and the little coffin came out 
of the lonely door, there stood a hundred stalwart 
workingmen from the pottery with their clean 
clothes on, losing their half-day's time from work 
for the privilege of following to the grave that 
little child whom probably not one of them had 
ever seen. 

These incidents illustrate the refining, softening 
influence that went out from even a child's sick- 
room and touched a hundred men. All over the 
country there are other chambers of suffering from 
which there goes out continually a power that 



SHUT IN. 233 

makes men and and women quieter, gentler, more 
thoughtful and kind. Thus God's " shut-ins " are 
means of grace oft-times to whole communities. 

It is known to many that there is a most helpful 
system of communication established among invalids 
over this country. Without any formal organiza- 
tion the following objects are aimed at: 1. To 
relieve the weariness of the sick-room by sendiug 
and receiving letters and other tokens of remem- 
brance ; 2. To testify of the love and presence of 
Christ in suffering and privation ; 3. To pray for 
one another at set times — daily at twilight hour, 
and weekly on Tuesday morning at ten o'clock ; 
4. To stimulate faith, hope, patience and courage 
in fellow-sufferers by the study and presentation 
of Bible promises. 

This simple exchanging of consolation among 
hundreds and thousands of " shut-ins " through- 
out the country is in itself a ministry whose help- 
fulness never can be estimated. Whatever tender 
comfort one finds is passed to others that they may 
share it. Strong friendships are formed between 
those who have never met. The hearts of all the 
great scattered company are drawn into loving sym- 
pathy as they think of and pray for one another. 

Those who are happy and strong, rejoicing in 



234 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

health and in physical freedom, should never for- 
get these " shut-ins." There are one or more of 
them in every community. There are many ways 
in which strength and comfort may be sent to them. 
A kindly letter now and then, full of cheer and 
affection, may be like an angel's visit to a weary 
sufferer. Or the thoughtfulness may be shown by 
sending a book or some flowers or a little basket 
of fruit or other token of love. In some cases 
personal visits are also practicable. There is some 
way, at least, in which every one may do a little to 
lighten the burden of invalidism in some weary 
sufferer; and surely of all such Jesus will say, 
"Ye did it unto me." 



XXI. 

HELPFUL PEOPLE. 

" May I reach 
That purest heaven, be to other souls 
The cup of strength in some great agony, 
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, 
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 
And in diffusion ever more intense !" 

George Eliot. 

TTSEFULNESS is the true measure of living. 
^ Our Lord made fruit the test of discipleshij*. 
What is fruit ? Is it not something which the tree 
bears to feed men's hunger ? In discipleship, then, 
fruit is something that grows upon our lives which 
others may take and feed upon. It is anything in 
us or that we do which does good to others. A 
fruitful Christian life is one, therefore, which is a 
blessing to men — one that is useful and helpful. 

No one cares for a tree to be covered with fruit 
merely to make a fine appearance ; the object of 
fruitfulness is to feed hunger, to satisfy men's 
cravings. Our Lord does not ask us to have lives 

235 



236 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

full of fruit merely to be looked at, merely to 
realize a certain standard of spiritual completeness. 
He does not want marble statues, however perfect 
in their cold whiteness. Moral excellence is not 
character merely, however faultless it may be. The 
stern old Puritan was right when, finding the 
silver images standing in dusty niches and learning 
that they were the twelve apostles, he directed that 
they should be taken down and coined and sent out 
to do good. Charles Kingsley said, " We become 
like God only as we become of use." 

Fruit, therefore, is usefulness. We are fruitful 
when our lives in some way feed others, when we 
are personally helpful. It may be by our words ; 
the ministry of good words is very wonderful. He 
who writes a book full of living, helpful thoughts 
which goes into the hands of the young or of the 
hungry-hearted, carrying inspiration, cheer, com- 
fort or light, does a service whose value never can 
be estimated. He who uses his gift of common 
speech, as he may use it, to utter brave, helpful, 
encouraging, stimulating words wherever he goes, 
is an immeasurable blessing in the world. He who 
writes timely letters to people who need sympathy, 
consolation, commendation, wise counsel or thought- 
ful word of any kind, puts secret strength into 



HELPFUL PEOPLE. 237 

many a spirit, feeds as with hidden manna many a 
struggling soul. He who sends a few flowers to a 
sick-room or a little fruit to a convalescent friend, 
or calls at the door to ask after a neighbor who is 
ill, or remembers the poor in some practical way, 
or is kind to a bereft one, is scattering benedictions 
whose far-reaching influence for good no eye can 
trace. These are chiefly little ways of helpfulness, 
and are suggested because they are such as are 
possible to nearly every one. 

" It is not mine to run with eager feet 
Along life's crowded way my Lord to meet ; 
It is not mine to pour the oil and wine, 
Or bring the purple robe or linen fine ; 
It is not mine to break at his dear feet 
The alabaster box of ointment sweet ; 
It is not mine to bear his heavy cross, 
Or suffer for his sake all pain and loss ; 
It is not mine to walk through valleys dim 
Or climb far mountain-heights alone with him ; 
He hath no need of me in grand affairs 
Where fields are lost or crowns won unawares. 
Yet, Master, if I may make one pale flower 
Bloom brighter for thy sake through one short hour, 
If I in harvest-fields where stray ones reap 
May bind one golden sheaf for love to keep, 
May speak one quiet word when all is still, 
Helping some fainting heart to bear thy will, 
Or sing one high, clear song on which may soar 
Some glad soul heavenward, — I ask no more." 



238 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

Not only are these little helpfulnesses possible to 
all, but they are the things that people need. Now 
and then a large thing must be done for another — 
men have sacrificed all in trying to help others — 
but, while at rare times very costly services are 
required, ordinarily it is the little kindnesses that 
are needed and that do the greatest good. 

Then the ministry of helpfulness, as a rule, is 
one that the poor can render as well as the rich. 
People do not very often need money; at least a 
thousand times oftener they need love more than 
money. It is usually much better to put a new 
hope into a discouraged man's heart than to put a 
coin into his pocket. Money is good alms in its 
way, but, compared with the divine gifts of hope, 
courage, sympathy and affection, it is paltry and 
poor. Ofttimes money-aid hinders more than it 
helps. It may make life a little easier for a day, 
but it is almost sure to make the recipient less 
manly and noble, less courageous and independent. 
The best way to help people is not to lighten the 
burden for them, but to put new strength into their 
hearts that they may be able to carry their own 
loads. That is the divine way. We are told to cast 
our burden upon the Lord, but the promise is not 
that the Lord will carry the burden for us, but that 



HELPFUL PEOPLE. 239 

he will strengthen our hearts that we may be able 
to bear our own burden. 

The aim of the divine helpfulness is not to make 
things easy for us, but to make something of us. 
We need to keep this divine principle in mind in 
our helping of others. It is usually easier to give 
relief than it is to help another to grow strong. Yet 
in many cases relief is the poorest help we can give ; 
the very best is inner help — that which makes one 
stronger, purer, truer, braver, that which makes 
one able to overcome. Some one has said, "To 
help another is the divinest privilege one can 
have. There are many who help us in mechanical 
things ; there are a few who help us in our outside 
duties; there are perhaps only two or three who 
can help us in our most sacred sphere of inner life." 
Yet it is the latter kind of help that is most 
valuable. The help that in a lifetime counts for 
most in real blessing is an uninterrupted flow of 
little ministries of word, of act, of quiet influence 
— kindness done to every one according to the need 
of each at the moment. To live fifty years of such 
life, though not one conspicuous thing is wrought 
in all that time, leaves an aggregate amount of 
good done vastly greater than fifty years of selfish 
living with one great and notable public benevo- 



240 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

lence reared like a monument of stone at the close 
of a man's days. 

Of helpful people the true Christian home presents 
the best illustrations. There each one lives for the 
others, not merely to minister in material ways and 
in services of affection, but to promote the growth of 
character into whatsoever things are pure, whatso- 
ever things are lovely. A true husband lives to be 
helpful in all ways to his wife, to make her happy, 
to brighten the path for her feet, to stimulate her 
spiritual life and to foster and encourage in her 
every noble aspiration. A true wife is a helpmate 
to her husband, blessing him with her love and 
doing him good, and not evil, all the days of her 
life. Parents live for their children. In all this 
world there is no nearer approach to the divine 
helpfulness than is found in true parental love. 
The Jewish rabbins said, " God could not be every- 
where, and therefore he made mothers." 

Brothers and sisters, also, where they realize the 
Christian ideal of their relation to each other, are 
mutually helpful in all ways. True brothers 
shield their sisters, protecting them from harm; 
they encourage them in their education and in all 
their culture of mind and heart. True sisters, in 
turn, are their brothers' guardian angels ; many a 



HELPFUL PEOPLE. 241 

young man owes to a sweet and gentle sister a debt 
he can never repay. Especially to older sisters are 
the brothers in countless homes indebted. Many a 
man honored in the world and occupying a place 
of influence and power owes all that he is to a sis- 
ter perhaps too much forgotten or overlooked by 
him, worn and wrinkled now, her beauty faded, 
living lonely and solitary, unwedded, who in the 
days of his youth was a guardian angel to him. 
She freely poured out for him then the best and 
richest of her life, giving the very blood of her 
veins that he might have more life and richer, 
denying herself even needed comforts that he, her 
heart's pride, might have books and might be edu- 
cated and fitted for noble and successful life. Such 
brothers can never honor enough the sisters who 
have made such sacrifices for them. 

There is a class of women in every community 
whom society flippantly and profanely denominates 
u old maids." The world ought to be told what 
uncrowned queens many of these women are, what 
undecorated heroines, what blessings to humanity, 
what builders of homes, what servants of others 
and of Christ. In thousands of instances they 
voluntarily remain unmarried for the sake of their 
families. Many of them have refused brilliant of- 

16 



242 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

fers of marriage that they might stay at home to 
toil for younger brothers or sisters, or that they 
might be the shelter and comfort of parents in 
the feebleness of their advancing years. Then 
there are many more who have freely hidden 
away their own heart-hunger that they might 
devote themselves to good deeds for Christ and 
for humanity. A glance over the pages of history 
will show many a woman's name which shines in 
the splendor of such self-sacrifice. Then in every 
community and neighborhood is one whose hand 
has not felt the pressure of the wedding-ring be- 
cause home-loved ones or the work of the Master 
outside seemed to need her hallowed love and her 
gentle service. We should learn to honor these un- 
married women instead of decorating their names 
with unworthy epithets. Many of them are the 
true heroines of neighborhood or of household, the 
real Sisters of Charity of the communities in which 
they live. Those who sometimes speak lightly or 
flippantly of them, who jest and sneer at their 
spinsterhood, ought to uncover their heads before 
them in reverence and kiss the hands — wrinkled 
now and shriveled — which never have been clasped 
in marriage. One writes in true and loyal spirit of 
such hands, folded in the coffin : 



HELPFUL PEOPLE. 243 

"Roughened and worn with ceaseless toil and care, 
No perfumed grace, no dainty skill, had these ; 
They earned for whiter hands a jeweled ease 

And kept the scars unlovely for their share. 

Patient and slow, they had the will to bear 

The whole world's burdens, but no power to seize 
The flying joys of life, the gifts that please, 

The gold and gems that others find so fair. 
Dear hands where bridal-jewel never shone, 

Whereon no lover's kiss was ever pressed, 

Crossed in unwonted quiet on the breast, 
I see through tears your glory newly won, 
The golden circlet of life's work well done 

Set with the shining pearl of perfect rest." 

No ambition could be higher than that which 
seeks to be worthy of a ministry of personal help- 
fulness. Every disclosure of heavenly existence 
that has been made to us in this world shows a 
life devoted to unselfish serving of others. We 
have in the Scriptures many glimpses of angels, 
and these radiant beings are presented to us as 
ministering spirits sent forth to do service for the 
sake of those who shall inherit salvation. Their 
holiness manifests itself in love and pity, and their 
adoration of God leads them to serve in behalf of 
fallen men. Every disclosure of the character of 
God himself reveals in him the same quality. His 
name is Love, and love is not love which does not 
serve. Jesus was God manifest in the flesh, and 



244 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

he said of his own mission that he came, " not to 
be ministered unto, but to minister." Thus it is 
in serving and in helping others that we become 
likest angels and likest God himself. No one has 
begun to live who has not begun to live for others. 
Life is never so rich and so beautiful as when it is 
giving itself out the most lavishly in act and sacri- 
fice of love. No one living in pampered self-in- 
dulgence, though wearing a jeweled crown, is half 
so royal in God's sight as the lowly one, obscure 
and untitled among men, who is living to serve. 

" Pour out thy love like the rush of a river 
Wasting its waters, for ever and ever, 
Through the burnt sands that reward not the giver ; 

Silent or songful, thou nearest the sea. 
Scatter thy life as the summer shower's pouring ! 
What if no bird through the pearl-rain is soaring ? 
What if no blossom looks upward adoring ? 
Look to the life that was lavished for thee !" 

There is an Oriental story of two brothers, 
Ahmed and Omar. Each wished to perform a 
deed whose memory should not fail, but which, as 
the years rolled on, might sound his name and 
praise far abroad. Omar with wedge" and rope 
lifted a great obelisk on its base, carving its form 
in beautiful devices and sculpturing many a strange 
inscription on its sides. He left it to stand in the 



HELPFUL PEOPLE. 245 

hot desert and cope with its gales — his monument. 
But Ahmed, with deeper wisdom and truer though 
sadder heart, digged a well to cheer the sandy waste, 
and planted about it tall date-palms to make cool 
shade for the thirsty pilgrim and to shake down 
fruits for his hunger. 

These two deeds illustrate two ways in either 
of which we may live. We may think of self and 
worldly success and fame, living to gather a fortune 
or to make a name splendid as the tall sculptured 
obelisk, but as cold and useless to the world. Or 
we may make our life like a well in the desert, with 
cool shade about it, to give drink to the thirsty and 
shelter and refreshment to the weary and faint. 

Which of these two ways of living is the more 
Christlike it is not hard to tell. Our Master went 
about doing good ; his life was one of personal help- 
fulness wherever he went. If we have his spirit, we 
shall hold our lives and all our possessions not as our 
own, but as means with which to serve and bless 
our fellow-men. We shall regard ourselves as 
debtors to all men, owing to the meanest the love 
that works no ill to the neighbor, that seeks not its 
own, that strives to do good to all. Then we shall 
consider our white hands as none too fine to do the 
lowliest service, even for the most unworthy. 



246 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

With this spirit in us we shall not have to seek 
opportunities for helpfulness. Then every word 
we speak, every smallest thing we do, every influ- 
ence we send forth, our mere shadow, as we pass by, 
falling on need and sorrow, will prove sweet, blessed 
ministry of love and will impart strength and help. 
Such living is twice blessed: it blesses others; it 
enriches and gladdens one's own heart. Selfishness 
is a stagnant pool ; loving service is a living stream 
that in doing good to others blesses itself as well and 
remains ever fresh and pure. 

" How many gentle, lovely lives, 

And fragrant deeds that earth has known, 
Were never writ in ink or stone ! 
And yet their sweetness still survives." 



XXII, 

TIRED FEET, 

"My feet are wearied and my hands are tired, 
My soul oppressed, 
And I desire what I have long desired — 
Eest, only rest." 

Father Kyan. 

GOME time after the author's Week-Day Be- 
^ ligion was issued, among the many kindly- 
words received from different quarters regarding the 
book, there came this: "Mother, sister J. and I 
read a chapter a day, I usually reading aloud. It 
was in the spring, in house-cleaning time, and we 
were very weary every night. One evening J. said, 
i Now for our chapter in Week-Day Religion' My 
feet were very tired and sore, and I said, as I threw 
myself on the lounge, 'I w r onder what Mr. Miller 
knows about tired feet V My sister replied that we 
should see. It was the fifth chapter — ( Cure for 
Care' — that we were to read that evening, and 
perhaps you will remember that the chapter closes 
with the stanza in which are these lines : 

247 



248 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

'And if through patient toil we reach the land 
Where tired feet with sandals loose may rest.' 

"Was not that rather a singular coincidence ? I am 
sure that, coming as it did, it was a real word from 
God for me, and it brought me new strength in my 
weariness." 

This pleasant testimony regarding a chance 
phrase in another volume has suggested to me 
for this book a whole chapter on " tired feet." 
The close of every day finds a great many persons 
with feet tired and sore. There are some people 
whose duties require them to walk all day. There 
are the men who patrol the city's streets, the guard- 
ians of our homes; there are the postmen who 
bring the letters to our doors ; there are the mes- 
sengers who are always hurrying to and fro on 
their errands; there are the pilgrims who travel 
on foot along the hard, dusty highways ; there are 
those who follow the plough or perform other parts 
of the farmer's work. Then there are those whose 
duties require them to be on their feet most of the 
day, either standing or walking about. Salespeople 
in great busy stores are scarcely ever allowed to sit 
down ; the same is true of those employed in many 
factories and mills. Indeed, the larger portion of 
all working-people, in all branches of industry. 



TIRED FEET. 249 

stand the greater part of the day. Thousands of 
women in their home-work rarely ever sit down 
during the long days to rest. Up stairs and down 
again, from kitchen to nursery, out to the market 
and to the store, in and out from early morning till 
late at night, these busy women are ever plodding in 
their housewifely duties. 

"Man's work's from sun to sun; 
Woman's work is never done." 

No wonder, then, that there are many sore and 
tired feet at the ending of each day. How welcome 
night is to the armies of weary people who then 
drop their tools or their yardsticks, or their other 
implements of toil, and hurry homeward ! How 
good it is to sit down and rest when the day's tasks 
are done ! Certainly there ought to be a chapter 
somewhere specially for people with tired feet. 

But what message of comfort is there for such ? 
For one thing, there is the thought of duty done. 
It is always a comfort, when one is tired, to reflect 
that one has grown tired in doing one's proper work. 
A squandered day, a day spent in idleness, may not 
leave such tired feet in the evening, but neither does 
it give the sweet pleasure that a busy day gives even 
with its blistered or aching feet. 



250 PB ACTIO AL RELIGION. 

There is a great deal of useless standing or walk- 
ing about that gets none of this comfort. There 
are young men who stand on the street-corners all 
day, and ofttimes far into the night, who must have 
weary feet when at last they turn homeward ; yet 
they have in their hearts no such sweet compensat- 
ing satisfaction as have those who have toiled all 
the long hours in some honest and honorable call- 
ing. Idleness brings only shame and self-contempt. 
Then there are certain kinds of occupation which 
give to weariness no sweetening comfort. A day 
spent in sinful work may make tired feet, but has 
no soothing for them in the evening's rest. 

But all duty well done has its restful peace of 
heart when the tasks are finished and laid down. 
Conscience whispers, "You were faithful to-day. 
You did all that was given to you to do ; you did 
not shirk nor skimp." And conscience is the 
whisper of God. But does God take notice of 
one's daily common work — ploughing, delivering 
letters, selling goods, cleaning house? Certainly 
he does. We serve him just as truly in our daily 
task- work as in our praying and Bible-reading. 
The woman who keeps the great cathedral clean, 
sweeping the dust from the aisles and from the 
pews, is serving her Lord as well, if her heart 



TIRED FEET. 251 

be right, as the gorgeously-robed minister who 
performs his sacred part in the holy worship. 
One of George MacDonald's poems teaches this 
in a very sweet way. 

" Methought that in a solemn church I stood. 

Its marble acres, worn with knees and feet, 

Lay spread from door to door, from street to street ; 
Midway the form hung high upon the rood 
Of Him who gave his life to be our good ; 

Beyond, priests flitted, bowed, and murmured meet 

Among the candles shining still and sweet; 
Men came and went, and worshiped as they could, 

And still their dust a woman with her broom, 
Bowed to her work, kept sweeping to the door. 

Then saw I, slow through all the pillared gloom, 

Across the church a silent figure come. 
1 Daughter/ it said, ' thou sweepest well my floor.' — 
i It is the Lord P I cried, and saw no more." 

The thought that we have done our duty for 
another day and have pleased God ought to be 
like soothing balm to our sore and tired feet at the 
end of the day. Our Master's commendation takes 
the sting out of any suffering endured in doing 
work for him. When we know that Christ in 
heaven has noticed our toil and has approved it, 
accepting it as holy service to himself, we are 
ready to toil another day. 

Another comfort for tired feet is in the coming 



252 PEA CTICA L RELIGION. 

of night, when one can rest. The day's tasks are 
finished, the rounds are all made, the store is closed, 
the horses are put away, the children are in bed, 
the housework is done, and the tired people can sit 
down. The tight shoes are taken off, loose slippers 
are substituted, and the evening's quiet begins. 
Who can tell the blessings that the night brings to 
earth's weary toilers ? Suppose there were no night, 
no rest — that the heavy sandals could never be laid 
off, that one could never sit down, that there could 
be no pause in the toil ; how terrible would life be ! 
Night is a holy time, because it brings rest. The 
rest is all the sweeter, too, because the feet are tired 
and sore. Those who never have been weary do not 
realize the blessings which come with the night. 

" Night is the time for rest. 

How sweet, when labors close, 
To gather round an aching breast 

The curtain of repose, 
Stretch the tired limbs and lay the head 
Down on our own delightful bed !" 

Wonderful is the work of repair in life that goes 
on while we sleep. Men bring the great ships to 
dock after they have ploughed the waves or 
battled with the storms and are battered and 
strained and damaged, and there they are repaired 



TIRED FEET. 253 

and made ready to go again to sea. At night our 
jaded and exhausted bodies are dry-docked after 
the day's conflict and toils, and while we sleep the 
mysterious process of restoration and reinvigora- 
tion goes on ; and when morning comes we are 
ready to begin a new day of toil and care. We lie 
down tired, feeling sometimes that we can never do 
another day's work ; but the morning comes again, 
we rise renewed in body and spirit, full of enthu- 
siasm and strong and brave for the hardest duties. 

What a blessing is sleep ! It charms away the 
weariness from the aching limbs; it brushes the 
clouds from the sky ; it refills life's drained foun- 
tains. One rendering of the old psalm-verse is, 
"So he giveth to his beloved in sleep." Surely, 
God does give us many rich blessings in our sleep. 
Angels come with noiseless tread into our chambers 
and leave their holy gifts and steal away unheard. 
God himself comes and touches us with his bene- 
dictions while our eyes are closed in slumber; he 
shuts our ears to earth's noises and holds us apart 
from its strifes and turmoils while he builds up 
again in us all that the day had torn down ; he 
makes us forget our griefs and cares, and sends 
sweet dreams to restore the brightness and the 
gladness to our tired spirits. 



254 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

There is something very wonderful in the mys- 
tery of sleep and in the way God comes to us in 
the darkness and the silence to bless us. Father 
Ryan, late poet-priest of the South, has written so 
exquisitely upon God's work in the night for his 
children that no apology is made for the quoting 
here of almost the whole poem : 

" Betimes I seem to see in dreams 
What when awake I may not see. 

Can night be God's more than the day ? 
Do stars, not suns, best light his way ? 
Who knoweth ? Blended lights and shades 
Arch aisles down which he walks to me. 

" I hear him coming in the night 
Afar, and yet I know not how ; 

His steps make music low and sweet ; 
Sometimes the nails are in his feet. 
Does darkness give God better light 
Than day to find a weary brow ? 

" Does darkness give man brighter rays 
To find the God in sunshine lost ? 

Must shadows wrap the trysting-place 
Where God meets hearts with gentlest grace ? 
Who knoweth it ? God hath his ways 
For every soul here sorrow-tossed. 

" The hours of day are like the waves 
That fret against the shores of sin : 
They touch the human everywhere, 
The bright-divine fades in their glare, 



TIRED FEET. 255 

And God's sweet voice the spirit craves 
Is heard too faintly in the din. 

" When all the senses are awake, 
The mortal presses overmuch 
Upon the great immortal part, 
And God seems farther from the heart. 
Must souls, like skies when day-dawns break, 
Lose star by star at sunlight's touch ? 

" But when the sun kneels in the west 

And gradually sinks as great hearts sink, 
And in his sinking flings adown 
Bright blessings from his fading crown, 
The stars begin their song of rest 

And shadows make the thoughtless think. 

" The human seems to fade away, 

And down the starred and shadowed skies 
The heavenly comes, as memories come 
Of home to hearts afar from home, 
And through the darkness after day 
Many a winged angel flies. 

"And somehow, tho' the eyes see less, 
Our spirits seem to see the more ; 

When we look thro' night's shadow-bars, 
The soul sees more than shining stars- 
Yea, sees the very loveliness 

That rests upon the golden shore." 

Another comfort for tired feet is in the thought 
that Jesus understands the weariness. We know 
that his feet were tired at the end of many a day. 
Once we are expressly told that, being wearied with 



256 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

liis long journey, he sat down on a well-curb to rest. 
He had come far through the dust and the noontide 
heat, and his feet were sore. All his days were 
busy days, for he was ever going about on errands 
of love. Many a day he had scarcely time to eat. 
Though never weary of, he was ofttimes weary in, 
his Father's business. 

When our feet are tired after the day's tasks and 
journeys, it ought to be a very precious comfort to 
remember that our blessed Master had like experi- 
ence, and therefore is able to sympathize with us. It 
is one of the chief sadnesses of many lives that people 
do not understand them, do not sympathize with 
them. They move about us, our neighbors and com- 
panions — even our closest friends — and laugh and 
jest and are happy and light-hearted, while we, close 
beside them, are suffering. They are not aware of 
our pain ; and if they were, they could not give us 
real sympathy, because they have never had any 
experience of their own that would interpret to 
them our experience. Only those who have suf- 
fered in some way can truly sympathize with those 
who suffer. One who is physically strong and has 
never felt the pain of weariness cannot understand 
the weakness of another whom the least exertion 
tires. The man of athletic frame who can walk 



TIRED FEET. 257 

all day without fatigue has small sympathy with 
the man of feeble health who is exhausted iu a 
mile. 

When we think of the glory of Christ, it would 
seem to us at first that he cannot care for our little 
ills and sufferings ; but when we remember that he 
lived on earth and knows our common life by per- 
sonal experience, and that he is " touched with the 
feeling of our infirmities," we know that he under- 
stands us and sympathizes with us in every pain. 
When we think of him sitting weary on the well- 
curb after his long, hard journey, we are sure that 
even in heaven he knows what tired feet mean 
to us after our day of toil. The comfort even 
of human sympathy, without any real relief, puts 
new strength and courage into the heart of one who 
suffers ; the assurance of the sympathy of Christ 
ought to lift the weary one above all weakness, 
above all faintness, into victorious joy. 

We should remember, too, that Christ's sacred 
feet were wounded that our feet may be soothed in 
their pain and weariness and at last may stand on 
the golden streets of heaven. There is a legend of 
Christ which tells of his walking by the sea, beau- 
tiful in form, wearing brown sandals upon his feet. 
A poet puts it thus : 

17 



258 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

" He walked beside the sea ; he took his sandals off 
To bathe his weary feet in the pure cool wave — 
For he had walked across the desert sands 
All day long — and as he bathed his feet 
He murmured to himself, ' Three years ! Three years ! 
And then, poor feet, the cruel nails will come 
And make you bleed, but that blood will lave 
All weary feet on all their thorny ways/ " 

There is still another comfort for tired feet in the 
hope of the rest that is waiting. This incessant 
toil is not to go on for ever. We are going to a 
land where the longest journeys will produce no 
weariness, where "tired feet with sandals loose 
may rest " from all that tires. The hope of heav- 
en, shining in glory such a little way before, ought 
to give us courage and strength to endure whatever 
of pain, conflict and suffering may come to us in 
these short days. 

"The burden of my days is hard to bear, 
But God knows best ; 
And I have prayed — but vain has been my prayer — 
For rest, sweet rest." 

« 'Twill soon be o'er ; 
Far down the west 
Life's sun is setting, and I see the shore 
Where I shall rest." 



XXIII. 

HANDS: A STUDY. 

" Take my hands, and let them move 
At the impulse of Thy love." 

F. E. Havergal. 

" The folded hands seem idle : 
If folded at his word, 
'Tis a holy service, trust me, 
In obedience to the Lord." 

Anna Shipton. 

"11 /TAN is the only animal that has hands ; the 
^ hand, therefore, is one of the marks of man's 
rank and of his power. With his hand he con- 
quers nature; with his hand he does the great 
works that distinguish him in God's creation ; 
with his hand he cultivates the soil, fells the 
trees of the forest, tunnels the mountains, builds 
cities, constructs machines, belts the globe with iron 
rails, navigates the sea and turns all the wheels of 
business. It is man's hand, too, which gives form 
and reality to the dreams and the visions of man's 
brain and soul. With his hand the thinker puts 
his thoughts into written words, to become powers 

259 



260 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

in the world ; with his hand the poet weaves into 
graceful lines the gentle inspirations of his Muse ; 
with his hand the musician interprets on his instru- 
ment the marvelous harmonies that move and stir 
men's hearts to their depths ; with his hand the art- 
ist puts on his canvas the wonderful creations of his 
genius which immortalize his name and become part 
of the world's heritage of beauty. 

Thus we have hints of the importance of our 
hands. Just what to do with them is a vital ques- 
tion in education. In them there are great possi- 
bilities of power and of usefulness. A distin- 
guished author, when he saw the marble image of 
an infant's hand, wrote of it something like this : 
that it ought to be kept until the child had grown 
to womanhood and then to old age ; until the hand 
had felt the pressure of affection and returned it ; 
until it had worn the wedding-ring ; until it had 
nursed babies and buried them ; until it had gath- 
ered the flowers of earth's pleasure and been pierced 
by the thorns ; until it had wrought its part in the 
world's work ; until it had grown old, wrinkled 
and faded and been folded on the bosom in the 
repose of death ; that then another cast of it in 
marble ought to be made, when the two hands 
would tell the whole story of a life. 



HANDS: A STUDY. 261 

It is intensely interesting to look at an infant's 
hand and to try to read its prophecy. Perhaps 
sleeping in the little fingers there is music which 
some day may thrill men's souls, or it may be that 
hidden away in them there are pictures which by 
and by will be made to live on the canvas, or pos- 
sibly there are poems whose magic lines will some 
time breathe inspirations for many lives ; at least, 
there must be folded up in the baby's chubby fin- 
gers countless beautiful things which will take form 
through the years as the hands do their allotted 
task-work. It is interesting to look at the little 
hand and to wonder what it will do. 

Then it is interesting, when a hand is folded in 
the coffin, to look at it and to think of all it has 
done — its victories, its achievements, its benefi- 
cences ; or perchance of the evil it has wrought — 
the hurt it has given to human lives, the suffering 
it has caused, the seeds of sin it has scattered. The 
story of all this the cold, still hand tells. 

Our hands should be trained to do their best ; all 
the possibilities in them should be developed. No 
doubt God has put into many fingers music which 
has never been draw r n out, and pictures which have 
never been painted upon canvas, and beauty which 
has never charmed men's eyes, and noble benefit 



262 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

cences which have never been wrought in acts. We 
should seek to bring out all that God has hidden 
in our hands. The things they were made to do 
we should strive to teach them to do. We should 
train them, also, to perform all their work carefully 
and thoroughly — always to do their best. Even 
the smallest things, that seem insignificant, we 
should do as well as we can. That is the way God 
w T orks. The most minute animalculse — millions of 
which swim in a drop of water — are as perfect in 
all their functions as are the largest of God's creat- 
ures. We do not know what is small or what is 
great in this world. Little things may be seeds of 
future great things; from the most infinitesimal 
acts stupendous results may come. 

" From things we call little Thine eyes 
See great things looking out." 

Our hands, therefore, should be trained to do 
always their best work. It is a shame to do any- 
thing in a slovenly way. It is a shame to work 
negligently, to slight what we are set to do, to 
hurry through our tasks, marring the workman- 
ship we ought to fashion just as carefully if it be 
but the writing of a postal-card or the dusting of a 
room or the building of a coal-shed as if it were 



HANDS: A STUDY. 263 

the painting of a great picture, the furnishing of a 
palace or the erection of a cathedral. 

Our hands should be ready always for duty. 
For a time the child does not find anything for 
its hands to do but to play; soon, however, it 
begins to discover tasks, for life is duty. Youth is 
full of bright dreams. Its earlier outlook paints 
life as pleasure only, but soon the aspect changes, 
the glamour fades out, and something harder and 
sterner emerges as duty begins to press its claims. 
Life's responsibility, when realized, is very serious 
and starts grave thoughts. It may be a burden to 
lift, a duty to do, a cross to bear ; yet to decline it 
is to fail. 

" Life is a burden : bear it ; 
Life is a duty : do it ; 
Life is a thorn-crown : wear it. 
Though it break your heart in twain, 

Though the burden crush you down, 
Close your lips and hide your pain : 
First the cross, and then the crown." 

Our hands should be loyal. They should never 
be withheld from duty. The question of pain or 
cost we should never raise. Sometimes we may 
have to grasp thorns, and the thorns will pierce 
our hands and leave them bleeding, yet we should 



264 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

not shrink even then from loyalty to duty. We 
can never forget how the hands of Christ were 
pierced and mangled in making redemption for us. 
They were beautiful hands ; they were soft and 
gentle — so gentle that they would not break a 
bruised reed ; they were healing hands and hands 
that were ever scattering blessings; yet the cruel 
nails tore them. He might have turned away 
from his cross, but he never faltered. With white 
face and steady step he went straight on to death. 
Thus the most beautiful hands in all the universe 
to-day are wounded hands. 

Indeed, the wounds are the very marks of glory 
on the hands of Christ. There is a strange legend 
of old Saint Martin. He sat one day in his mon- 
astery cell busily engaged in his sacred studies, when 
there was a knock at his door. " Enter !" said the 
monk. The door swung open, and there appeared 
a stranger of lordly look, in princely attire. " Who 
art thou ?" asked Saint Martin. — " I am Jesus 
Christ," was the answer. The confident bearing 
and the commanding tone of the visitor would have 
awed a man less wise than Saint Martin, but he 
simply gave his visitor one deep, searching, pene- 
trating glance, and then quietly asked, " Where is 
the print of the nails ?" The monk had seen that 



HANDS: A STUDY. 265 

this one indubitable mark of Christ's person was 
wanting. There were no nail-scars on those jeweled 
hands, and the kingly mien and the brilliant dress 
of the pretender were not enough to prove his claim 
while the print of the nails was wanting. Confused 
by the monk's searching question and his base de- 
ception exposed, the prince of evil — so the legend 
runs-^-quickly fled away from the sacred cell. The 
hands of our Saviour are known by the print of the 
nails. In heaven we shall know him by his wounded 
hands. The most beautiful hands may not then be 
the softest, the smoothest, but may be hardened 
with toil or torn in struggle. 

We may go through life and keep our hands very 
white, unroughened, unwounded, yet at the end we 
may find that they have wrought nothing, won 
nothing. When an army comes home from vic- 
torious war, it is not the regiment with the full 
ranks of unscarred men that the people cheer most 
loudly, but the regiment with only a remnant of 
soldiers, and these bearing the marks of many a 
battle. Hands scarred from conflict with life's 
enemies are more beautiful when held up before 
God than hands white and unwounded and covered 
with flashing jewels, because the scars tell of toil 
and battle. 



266 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

Many a good man seems to live in vain in this 
world. He toils hard, but gathers nothing; he 
seems unsuccessful all his days ; the things he 
undertakes do not prosper. He is a good man, 
faithful, conscientious, prayerful, honest and dili- 
gent, yet he appears to have no earthly reward. 
His life is one long discouragement, one unbroken 
struggle with unfavorable circumstances and con- 
ditions. The burden of care never lightens and 
the shadow of disappointment never lifts. He 
dies a poor man with hands rough and scarred 
and empty. His neighbor, close beside him, seems 
to have only success, and never failure. No dis- 
appointment comes to him ; everything he touches 
prospers. Without toil or struggle or wounding, 
his hands are filled with earth's treasures. But 
when God looks upon the two men's hands, it 
may be that he will honor most the empty hands 
with the knotted joints and the marks of toil and 
struggle and suffering. 

" There were two princes doomed to death ; 

Each loved his beauty and his breath ; 
1 Leave us our life, and we will bring 

Fair gifts unto our lord the king.' 

" They went together. In the dew 
A charmed bird before them flew. 



HANDS: A STUDY. 267 

Through sun and thorn one followed it : 
Upon the other's arm it lit. 

" A rose whose faintest flush was worth 
All buds that ever blew on earth 
One climbed the rocks to reach. Ah, well ! 
Into the other's breast it fell. 

ft Weird jewels such as fairies wear, 
When moons go out, to light their hair, 
One tried to touch on ghostly ground : 
Gems of quick fire the other found. 

" One with the dragon fought to gain 
The enchanted fruit, and fought in vain ; 
The other breathed the garden's air, 
And gathered precious apples there. 

" Backward to the imperial gate 
One took his fortune, one his fate. 
One showed sweet gifts from sweetest lands ; 
The other, torn and empty hands. 

" At bird and rose and gem and fruit 
The king was sad, the king was mute ; 
At last he slowly said, ' My son, 
True treasure is not lightly won. 

" ' Your brother's hands, wherein you see 
Only these scars, show more to me 
Than if a kingdom's price I found 
In place of each forgotten wound/' " 

Our hands should be trained to gentle ministries. 
It would be pleasant to think of what a hand — 
just a common hand without money or gifts of any 



268 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

kind — can do to bless, to inspire, to comfort, to 
soothe, to help. A dying father lays his hand upon 
the head of his child in parting benediction, and 
through all his life the child feels the touch and is 
blessed by its memory. A baby wakes in the dark- 
ness and cries out in terror ; the mother reaches out 
her hand and lays it upon her little one, and it is 
instantly quieted. You are sick and hot with fever 
and a friend comes in and lays a soft, cool hand 
upon your burning brow, and a delicious sense of 
soothing thrills you. You are in sore affliction, 
sitting with breaking heart in your home, out of 
which the light has gone ; there seems no comfort 
for you. Then one comes in and sits down beside 
you ; he scarcely speaks, but he takes your hand in 
his and holds it with warm, gentle pressure. It 
may be a rough, hard hand or a large, awkward 
hand, but there flows through it to your soul a 
current of loving sympathy and of strengthful 
inspiration which seems to fill up your heart's 
drained fountains. The friend goes away without 
having spoken a dozen words, but you are conscious 
of a wonderful uplifting. You go out some morn- 
ing discouraged and heavy-hearted ; you do not see 
the blue sky overhead, for your eyes are downcast 
on the dull earth, where only clods and cobbles can 



HANDS: A STUDY. 269 

be seen. Something has cast a shadow over you. 
Suddenly in the way a friend meets you and accosts 
you in cheerful tone ; reaching out his hand, he 
grasps yours with great heartiness and holds it for a 
moment tight in his own warm clasp while he looks 
into your face and speaks an earnest, whole-souled 
greeting. He goes his way and you hurry on in 
yours, but now you look up and see that there is 
blue sky over your head; the shadow has lifted 
and the sunshine has entered your soul. Your 
friend's handshake did it all. 

At the Beautiful gate lay a lame man reaching 
out his hand for alms. Two men approached, and 
the beggar craved a money-gift. The men had no 
money to give, but in the name of Christ they bade 
him rise up and walk ; then one of them gave him 
his hand to help him to his feet. We say the age 
of miracles is past, but yet everywhere consecrated 
human hands are helping fallen ones to rise. Thou- 
sands who are in heaven to-day were saved through 
the ministry of a human hand that at the right 
moment was reached out in sympathy or in helpful- 
ness to enable them to rise. 

These are hints only of the possibilities of bless- 
ing which God has hidden away in our hands. 
Even without money and without words we may 



270 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

perform a wonderful ministry of good simply with 
our hands. The power that is in their touch or in 
their clasp is almost infinite. There is a possible 
ministry of incalculable influence in our ordinary 
handshaking. Every day as we pass along come 
unnumbered opportunities to do great good simply 
by the reaching out of our hands to those who are 
tempted or discouraged or sorrowing, or who have 
fainted and fallen in the strife. We ought to give 
our hands to Christ in consecration ; we ought to 
let our heart flow out through our hands that with 
every hand-grasp and every touch our best love 
may go forth to those who need its healing, inspir- 
ing ministry. God wishes our hands to be always 
ready to minister to those who are in need. No 
other work in this world is so important as this. 
No matter what we are doing, when the call of 
human distress reaches our ear we must drop 
everything and be quick to respond. Mrs. Brown- 
ing has put this truth in very striking phrase in 
a passage in " Aurora Leigh." In a company of 
working-girls one of them flippantly announces 
that another, who is absent, is dying, and then 
chatters on about the poor sick girl as if she were 
a block of wood. But there is one in the party 
whose heart is moved. 



HANDS: A STUDY. 271 

" Marian rose up straight, 
And, breaking through the talk and through the work, 
Went outward, in the face of their surprise, 
To Lucy's home to nurse her back to life 
Or down to death. She knew by such an act 
All place and grace were forfeit in the house, 
Whose mistress would supply the missing hand 
With necessary, not inhuman, haste, 
And take the blame. But pity, too, had dues : 
She could not leave a solitary soul 
To founder in the dark while she sat still 
And lavished stitches on a lady's hem, 
As if no other work were paramount. 
i Why, God,' thought Marian, ' has a missing hand 
This moment Lucy wants a drink, perhaps. 
Let others miss me ; never miss me, God.'" 



The old legend says that once three young ladies 
disputed about their hands, as to whose were the 
most beautiful. One of them dipped her hand in 
the pure stream, another plucked berries till her 
fingers were pink, and the third gathered flowers 
whose fragrance clung to her hands. An old hag- 
gard woman passed by and asked for some gift, but 
all refused her. Another young woman, plain and 
with no claim to beauty of hand, satisfied her need. 
The old woman then said, " It is not the hand that 
is washed in the brook, nor the hand tinted with red, 
nor the hand garlanded and perfumed with flowers, 
that is most beautiful, but the hand that gives to 



272 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

the poor." As she spoke her wrinkles were gone, 
her staff was thrown away, and she stood there 
an angel from heaven. 

This is only a legend, but its judgment is true : 
the beautiful hands are those that minister in Christ's 
name to others. 

Sometimes the hands can only be folded in quiet- 
ness, unable longer to toil or do battle or perform 
active service of good. But even folded hands 
need not be useless. It is a sad pity when hands 
that are strong and full of life and power are 
folded in indolence or cowardice. 

" Some hands fold where other hands 
Are lifted bravely in the strife, 
And so through ages and through lands 
Move on the two extremes of life." 

But when through physical illness or through 
maiming on the field our hands can no more labor 
or bear the sword or do their gentle deeds, we 
should not repine. God never asks impossibilities, 
and he is pleased with sweet resignation when in 
his providence we can no longer take our place 
amid his active workers. The most acceptable serv- 
ice we can then render to him is a ministry of joy 
and praise while we submit to his loving will and 
are quiet under his afflicting hand. But even 



HANDS: A STUDY. 273 

folded hands may still be hands of blessing : they 
may be reached up to God in prayer and interces- 
sion, and may draw down upon other lives rich 
benedictions. 

At last the busiest hands must lie folded on the 
bosom in the stillness of death, but the things we 
have done in this world shall not perish when the 
hands that wrought them are mouldering to dust. 
Touches of beauty which we have left on other 
lives shall never fade out; the thrill of new 
strength given by our warm hand -clasp shall go 
on for ever in quickened life ; the fallen one lifted 
up by us and saved shall walk eternally in glory. 
The seeds our hand has scattered shall grow into 
plants of immortal beauty. When we rest from 
our labors, the work of our hands shall follow us. 
Men journey now thousands of miles to look upon 
the paintings of artists whose hands for centuries 
have wrought no beauty ; ages and ages hence, in 
heaven, angels and redeemed men shall look with 
rapturous joy upon some touch of beauty put yes- 
terday in a human soul by a lowly consecrated 
hand of earth. 

18 



XXIV. 

LEARNING OUR LESSONS. 

" I often think I cannot spell 
The lesson I must learn, 
And then in weariness and doubt 
I pray the page may turn ; 

" But time goes on, and soon I find 
I was learning all the while, 
And words which seemed most dimly traced 
Shine out with rainbow smile." 

Frances Kiixley Havergai,. 

TXTE are all scholars at school. In our present 
life we never get out of our class-forms ; our 
real living lies on beyond, and here all is education. 
We are at school not merely when we are bending 
over our Bibles, listening to sermons, reading good 
books or sitting at the feet of our teachers, but also 
when we are at our tasks, when we are in the midst 
of life's busy scenes and when we are passing through 
experiences of difficulty and trial. 

We have our school-books from which to learn 
our lessons ; among these the Bible is first. It is a 
wonderful book. God is its author ; its lessons are 

274 



LEARNING OUR LESSONS. 275 

patterned from the heavenly life, which is the stand- 
ard in all our earthly training ; it contains all that 
we need to learn ; its lessons, fully mastered, will 
bring us to heaven's gates. 

There are also secondary text-books in which 
Bible-lessons are set for us in different forms. In 
the lives of good people about us we have these 
lessons — not written out with ink on white paper, 
but transcribed in indelible letters on mystic life- 
pages. We see there the lessons not in words 
merely, as commands for obedience, as rules for 
action or as heavenly patterns for earthly attain- 
ment, but brought down out of the skies and 
wrought into actual life. 

In providence, too, we have another secondary 
text-book ; in this God gives us special lessons. 
Here, ofttimes, he compels us to learn the things 
we do not want to learn. Here the school is dis- 
ciplinary ; our Father so deals with us as to subdue 
our willfulness, to check our waywardness, to quell 
our rebelliousness, to correct our ideas of life and to 
cleanse our hearts of the poison of sin that lurks in 
them. Many times this part of our school-experi- 
ence is painful, but its results are full of blessing. 

" The darkness in the pathway of man's life 
Is but the shadow of God's providence 



276 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

By the great Sun of wisdom cast thereon, 
And what is dark below is light in heaven." 

In life itself we have a "practice-school;" the 
things we learn from our text-books we there try 
to get into our life. For example, our morning 
lesson is the duty of patience. We understand 
quite clearly, as we bend over the Bible-page, 
what the lesson means and what it requires us 
to do. Then with prayer for grace we shut the 
book and go out into the world to take up our 
tasks and to meet the experiences of the day. On 
all sides people's lives touch ours — not always sym- 
pathetically, sometimes in such a way as would 
naturally disturb us, arouse antagonism in us, 
provoke us to anger, or at least ruffle our calm. 
Now comes in our morning lesson on patience. 
The learning of it in mere words was a simple 
enough matter, but probably we shall find that it 
is not so simple a matter to practice it. It is much 
easier to get a text of Scripture fastened in our 
memory than to get the lesson of the text wrought 
into our life. Nevertheless, there the lesson stands, 
confronting our eyes all the day. 

" Be patient, patient, and the hasty word 
Which loose will raven like the evening wolf 
Hold in the bars of safety. Bear the cross 



LEARNING OUR LESSONS. 277 

Fibre of things, the thousand vexing cares, 
With such a sweet, ennobling fortitude, 
Such gentle bravery, that the heart will find 
In the still fold a fairer victory 
Than in the stormy field, and home itself 
Win to rejoicing peace." 

Part of our day's task is to apply this lesson, 
allowing it to hold in check all the impulses toward 
impatience which the passing experiences may stir 
within us. Our morning text is set to stand 
monitor over our dispositions, words and conduct, 
and its mission is to bring all our life to its lofty 
standard. 

Or the lesson may be, "Love . . . seeketh not 
her own" We look at it first merely as a rule, a 
principle, apart from its relation to our own life, 
and we give it our most hearty approval; it is 
Christlike, we say, to live so. Again, we go out 
amid the strifes, the ambitions, the clashings and 
the competitions of life, and begin our day. We 
have learned our lesson ; now we are to practice 
it. This we soon find is very hard. It is against 
nature; there is a law in our members which at 
once begins to war against the new idea of love 
which as disciples of Christ we have taken into 
our heart. To obey our morning lesson requires 
the putting of self under our feet, and self violently 



278 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

resists such humiliation. Still, there the lesson 
stands in shining letters, and it is our duty, as 
obedient and diligent scholars, to learn it — that is, 
to strive to get it wrought into our own life. 

The same is true whatever the lesson may be. 
It is one thing to learn well what the lessons are 
and quite another thing to learn to live them. Most 
of us acquire life's lessons very slowly. Some of us 
are dull scholars ; some of us are careless, loving 
play better than school, not taking life seriously, 
not diligently applying ourselves to our lessons; 
some of us are willful and obstinate, indisposed 
to submit to our teachers and to the rules of the 
school. Thus many of us come to the close of our 
school-days without having learned much — certainly 
without having attained a large measure of that cult- 
ure of character and that discipline of life which it 
is the end of all spiritual training to produce. We 
are not obedient to our heavenly visions. We know, 
but we do not. We learn our lessons, but fail oft- 
times to live them. 

All life-lessons are slowly learned. It is the 
work of years to school our wayward wills into 
uncomplaining submissiveness, our hard, proud, 
selfish hearts into soft, gentle thoughts, and our 
harsh, chattering tongues into sweet, quiet speech. 



LEARNING OUR LESSONS. 279 

The natural process of spiritual growth is first 
the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the 
ear, and these developments require time. We 
cannot have blade, ear and full corn — bud, blossom 
and ripened fruit — all in one day. We must be 
content to learn slowly the great lessons of life. 
Ofttimes, too, we have to take the same lesson over 
and over again. In one of Miss HavergaFs sug- 
gestive poems she illustrates this by the experience 
of a pupil who thought she knew her lesson well, 
but the teacher came and gravely though lovingly 
shook her head, and returned the book with the 
mark in the same place : the pupil was to take the 
same lesson again. This time it was mastered 
every word. We commend the faithfulness and 
the wisdom of the teacher who will allow no pupil 
to pass any lesson that is not mastered. It is far 
truer kindness, also, to the pupil to insist that he 
shall take his lesson over again, rather than allow 
it to pass and to remain a leaf dropped out, a lesson 
not learned. So, when we do not have our lessons 
learned, God gives them to us again. 

" Is it not often so — 

That we only learn in part, 
And the Master's testing-time may show 
That it was not quite ' by heart ' ? 



280 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

Then he gives, in his wise and patient grace, 

That lesson again, 
With the mark still set in the selfsame place. 

" Then let our hearts ' be still ' 

Though our task is turned to-day ; 
Oh, let him teach us what he will 

In his own gracious way, 
Till, sitting only at Jesus' feet, 

As we learn each line, 
The hardest is found all clear and sweet." 
f 
When we look at one who seems to have ac- 
quired all life's lessons, it is a great comfort to us 
who are so far behind him to know that he began 
low down in the Master's school and learned his 
lessons in just the same slow, painful way in which 
we have to learn them. Thus Saint Paul, referring 
to himself, said, " I have learned, in whatsoever 
state I am, therein to be content." The statement 
is remarkable because such contentment is so rare 
even among Christian people. But there is one 
word in this bright record of spiritual attainment 
which has immeasurable comfort for us common 
mortals in our struggles after the same spirit. 
Saint Paul says that he had learned to be content. 
We know, then, that he was not always thus ; at 
the first he probably chafed amid discomforts and 
had to learn his lesson as we have to learn ours. 



LEARNING OUR LESSONS. 281 

Contentment did not come naturally to him any- 
more than it does to ordinary Christians ; it was 
not a special apostolic gift which came with his 
divine appointment to his sacred ministry. He 
learned to be contented. Probably it was no easy 
attainment for him, and was reached only through 
many a struggle and through long and painful 
self-discipline. 

Such a glimpse into the inner history of a saintly 
life ought to have its encouragement for us. Life's 
great lessons cannot be learned by any one without 
persistent and patient effort, but they can be 
mastered by any one who is in Christ's school and 
who will be earnest, diligent and faithful. The 
paths that others have trodden before us to honor 
and nobleness are open also to our feet. 

But the question comes up from a vast multitude 
of men and women who are dissatisfied with their 
attainments and long to grow better, " How can we 
get these beautiful lessons wrought into life ?" We 
know very well that we ought to be patient, sweet- 
tempered, unselfish, thoughtful and contented ; but 
when we begin to reach after these qualities, we 
find them far away and unattainable. The bright 
stars in the sky seem scarcely farther beyond our 
reach, when we stand on one of earth's lofty peaks, 



282 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

than do the spiritual lessons set for us when we 
strive to get them into our life. Nothing makes 
us more conscious of our fallen state than our 
attempts to realize in ourselves the beauty of 
Christ. We soon discover that moral perfection is 
inaccessible to any human climbing. We are like 
birds with broken wings — made to fly into the 
heart of the sky, but unable to do more than flutter 
along low down and close to the earth. So the ques- 
tion recurs perpetually, " How can we ever master 
these lessons that are set for us ? They are hard 
enough for angels; how, then, can fallen mortals 
ever learn them?" 

At last we are compelled to confess that we can 
never learn them save in Christ's school. He says, 
"Learn of me and ye shall find rest unto your 
souls." There is a little prayer — said to have been 
Fenelon's prayer — which recognizes and voices this 
helplessness of humanity in a most striking way. It 
is in these words: "Lord, take my heart, for I 
cannot give it ; and when thou hast it, oh keep it, 
for I cannot keep it for thee ; and save me in spite 
of myself, for Jesus Christ's sake." Each clause 
of the short prayer fits our hearts. 

" Lord, take my heart, for I cannot give it." We 
want to give our heart to Christ, but we are con- 



LEARNING OUE LESSONS. 283 

scious of something holding us down, so that we 
cannot press ourselves into Christ's hands. An old 
writer says, " Of what avail are wings, when we 
are fast bound by iron chains?" That is our 
picture — like an eagle, eager to fly away into the 
sky, but chained to a rock. Unless Christ take us 
and lift us away, breaking our chains, we never can 
fly into his bosom. 

"And when thou hast it, oh keep it, for I cannot 
keep it for thee." Again it is the plaint of every 
heart that the prayer voices. Our life may be laid 
sweetly in Christ's bosom to-day, but unless he shall 
keep it, folding about it his own mighty arms, it 
will fall out again into darkness. We cannot keep 
our heart for Christ. 

"And save me in spite of myself." Pitiable as 
is the confession of weakness in these words, we 
know well that if ever we are saved it must be 
in spite of ourselves. 

So we are brought to realize that the lessons of 
Christian life can be learned only when we have 
Christ not merely for a Teacher, but also for a 
Saviour ; we never can be Christlike unless Christ 
shall lift us up by his grace. But by receiving 
Christ into our hearts we enter the family of 
God on earth and become heirs of glory. The 



284 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

first thing, therefore, in learning our lessons is to 
have Christ living in us ; then our lives shall grow 
from within into all moral loveliness. 

Another secret in spiritual education is to seek at 
once to live every lesson we are taught. There is 
not a line of divine truth which is not intended in 
some way to aifect our lives. Too many of us are 
content to know the lesson, and then not do it. 
Divine truth is not given to us merely for informa- 
tion, to make us intellectually intelligent. The 
Bible is a book for action. It is designed to be a 
guide to us. A guide's duty is not to deliver lect- 
ures to tourists telling them of the richness and the 
picturesqueness of the country that lies beyond the 
hills, describing the path that leads to it, and vividly 
painting the beautiful scenery along the way. A 
guide's duty is to take his party along the path, lead- 
ing them safely through all dangers, and conducting 
them at last into the beautiful country that their 
own eyes may see it. The word of God is given to 
us to be our guide ; that is, every sentence of it is 
a call to us to move onward, away from some sin 
or danger or self-indulgence, to some fresh duty, 
some higher plane of living, some new holiness, 
some richer experience. 

Every line of the Bible, therefore, is a lesson set 



LEARNING OUR LESSONS. 285 

for us which we are to learn — not intellectually 
alone, but by doing what the lesson teaches. We 
can never really learn the words of Scripture save 
by doing them. For example, here is a music-book 
— a book with notes on a musical staff, and with 
words also which are meant to be sung to the notes. 
The man who asks me to buy this book says it will 
teach me music. I buy the book and take it home, 
and sit down in my quiet library to learn my les- 
sons. I memorize all the explanations and defini- 
tions till I can open the book at any tune and tell 
what the key is and what the notes are. Yet I have 
never opened my mouth to try to sing ; I cannot 
even run a scale. Every one knows that music is 
not learned in that way. The pupil must practice 
the notes ; he must make the sounds indicated. It 
is just so with the Bible. The only way to learn its 
lessons is to do them. Merely discovering what our 
duties are will not take us a step onward in Chris- 
tian life. We can learn only by doing. When the 
path has been pointed out to us, we must set our 
feet in it. When the song has been written out for 
us, we must sing it. When the land has been de- 
scribed to us, w r e must move forward and take pos- 
session of it. When the picture has been visioned 
to us, we must paint it on the canvas of our soul. 



286 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

When the duty has been revealed to us, we must 
hasten to carry our whole soul into it. 

We should take, also, the lessons of experience as 
we learn them, and carry them forward to enrich 
our life. It certainly is a profitless living which 
gets nothing from its past. We should train our- 
selves to look honestly at our own past and with 
unsparing fidelity to note the mistakes we have 
made and the wrong things we have committed. 
Then, having discovered the errors and mistakes 
we have made, we should straightway formulate for 
ourselves the lessons which our experience is de- 
signed to teach, and instantly begin to live by the 
new wisdom thus acquired. Our past is of use to 
us only as it helps us make our future better. Its 
errors should be shunned, its mistakes avoided. It 
certainly is weak and poor living, unworthy of an 
immortal being, which gathers nothing from ex- 
perience and goes on day after day and year after 
year merely repeating the old routine of negligence 
and failure, with no progress, learning nothing, 
growing no gentler, no stronger, no braver, no 
more Christlike. Our lives should be like open- 
ing rosebuds, every day unfolding some new beauty. 
The Christ in us should break through the crust of 
our outer life as the lamplight pours through the 



LEARNING OUR LESSONS. 287 

porcelain shade, and appear more and more in our 
character, in our disposition, in our words and 
conduct. 

The celebrated statue of Minerva which stood in 
the Acropolis at Athens was renowned for its grace- 
ful beauty and its exquisite sculpture, but there was 
in it another feature which no close observer failed 
to notice. Deeply engraven in the buckler on the 
statue was the image of Phidias, the sculptor; it 
was so deftly impressed that it could be effaced 
only by destroying the work of art itself. In like 
manner, in the life of every true Christian is the 
image of Christ ; it is so inwrought in the character, 
in the disposition, in the whole being, that it cannot 
be destroyed. It is toward the filling out of this 
likeness that all Christian culture aims. All our 
lessons are in growing Christlike. In any circum- 
stances we need but to ask, " How would my Mas- 
ter act if he were in my place ?" and then strive to 
do what he would do. 

Thus all life is school to us. The lessons are set 
for us hour by hour. We think we are in this 
world to work, to achieve success, to accomplish 
something that will remain when we are gone; 
really, however, we are not here to work, but to 
be trained. Everything in our life is educational 



288 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

and disciplinary. Duty is but lesson-practice; work 
is for development more than for results ; trial is for 
the testing and the strengthening of our powers; 
sorrow is for the purifying of our souls. Many 
times our lessons are hard and our experiences are 
.bitter ; but if we are patient and faithful, we shall 
some day see that our Teacher never set us a wrong 
lesson, never required of us a needless self-denial, 
never called us to pass through an unblessed dis- 
cipline, never corrected us but for our profit that 
we might be partakers of his holiness. 

" Some time, when all life's lessons have been learned, 

And sun and stars for evermore have set, 
The things which our weak judgments here have spurned, 

The things o'er which we grieved with lashes wet, 
Will flash before us, out of life's dark night, 

As stars shine most in deeper tints of blue, 
And we shall see how all God's plans were right, 

And how what seemed reproof was love most true." 



XXV. 

BROKEN LIVES. 

" Oh, to be nothing, nothing, 

Only to lie at his feet, 
A broken and emptied vessel 

For the Master's use made meet — 
Emptied, that he might fill me 
As forth to his service I go ; 
Broken, that so unhindered 

His life through me might flow !" 

rpHERE are few entirely unbroken lives in this 
■*■ world ; there are few men who fulfill their own 
hopes and plans without thwarting or interruption at 
some point. Now and then there is one who in 
early youth marks out a course for himself and then 
moves straight on in it to its goal, but most persons 
live very differently from their own early dreaming. 
Many find at the close of their career that in 
scarcely one particular have they realized their 
own life-dreams; at every point God has simply 
set aside their plans and substituted his own. 

There are some lives whose plans are so com- 
pletely thwarted that their story is most pathetic 

I 9 289 



290 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

as we read it ; yet we have but to follow it through 
to the end to see that the broken life was better 
and more effective than if its own plan had been 
carried out. 

The story of Harriet Newell is an illustration of 
a broken life. Listening to the cries of the perish- 
ing and to the call of duty, she sailed away as a 
missionary. She had in her heart a great purpose 
and a great hope. She planned to devote her rich 
and beautiful life, with all its powers of love, 
sympathy and helpfulness, to the cause of Christ 
in heathen lands ; she hoped to be a blessing to 
thousands as she lived a sweet life amid the dark- 
ness and heathenism and told the story of Christ's 
cross to perishing ones. With these desires and 
hopes in her soul she sailed away to India, but she 
was never permitted to do any work for Christ 
among those she so yearned to save. Driven from 
inhospitable shores and drifting long at sea, first 
her baby died, and then she herself soon sank into 
death's silence. In one short year she was bride, 
missionary, mother and saint. 

Truly, her life seemed a broken one — defeated, 
a failure. Not one of the glorious hopes of her 
own consecration was realized. She told no heathen 
sister of the love of Christ ; she taught no little 



BROKEN LIVES. 291 

child the way of salvation ; she had no opportunity 
to live a sweet life in the midst of the black 
heathenism she so wanted to bless ; yet that little 
grain of wheat let fall into the ground and dying 
there has yielded a wonderful harvest. The story 
of her life has kindled the missionary spirit in 
thousands of other women's souls. Harriet Newell, 
dying with all her heart's holy hopes unrealized, 
has done far more for missions by the inspiration 
of her heroic example and by the story of her life's 
sacrifice than she could ever have done in the 
longest life of the best service in the field. The 
broken life became more to the world than it could 
have become by the carrying out of its own plans. 

The story of David Brainerd is scarcely less 
pathetic. At Northampton his grave is seen beside 
that of the fair young girl whom he loved, but did 
not live to wed. His death seemed untimely, like 
the cutting down of a tree in the springtime when 
covered with buds just ready to burst into bloom 
and then grow into rich fruit. In that noble life, 
as men saw it, there were wondrous possibilities of 
usefulness. The young man seemed fitted to do a 
great work and he had consecrated himself on 
God's altar with large hopes of service for his 
Master ; but all these hopes and expectations were 



292 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

buried in the early grave of the young missionary, 
and to human eyes there was nothing left but a 
precious memory and a few score of Indian Chris- 
tians whom he had been permitted to lead to the 
Saviour. His seemed indeed a broken life. But we 
must not write our judgments on God's work until 
it is finished. A skillful hand inspired by tender 
love gathered up the memorials of the fragment of 
consecrated life Brainerd had lived and put them 
into a little biography. The book was wafted over 
the sea, and Henry Martyn, busy in his studies, read 
it. The result was that that brilliant young student 
felt his own heart fired with missionary zeal as he 
pondered the story of Brainerd's brief but beauti- 
ful life, and was led to devote himself, with all his 
splendid gifts, to God for India. Thus the broken 
life of Brainerd became the inspiration in a distant 
country of another noble missionary career. And 
who can tell what other lives through this glorious 
missionary century have likewise been kindled at 
young Brainerd's grave ? 

The story of Henry Martyn is that of another 
broken life. He went to India, and there laid his 
magnificent powers upon God's altar. He wrought 
with earnestness and with great fervor, but at the end 
there seemed to be small gain to the cause of Christ 



BROKEN LIVES. 293 

from all his toil and self-denial. Then, broken 
down, sick and dying, he turned his face home- 
ward and dragged himself in great suffering and 
weakness " as far as that dreary khan at Tocat by 
the Black Sea, where he crouched under the piled- 
up saddles to cool his burning fever against the 
earth, and there died alone among unbelievers, no 
Christian hand to tend his agony, no Christian 
voice to speak in his ear the promises of the Master 
whom, as it seemed to men, he had so vainly served." 
Both these young missionary lives appeared to be 
entire failures, wasted lives, costly ointment poured 
out to no purpose ; but from the grave of Brainerd 
at Northampton and from the desolate resting-place 
of Henry Marty n at Tocat has come much — who 
can tell how much ? — of the inspiration of modern 
missions. God broke the alabaster caskets which 
held their rich lives that the fragrance might flow 
out to fill all the world. 

There is another class of broken lives — of those 
who, disappointed in their own early hopes and 
turned aside, yet live to realize in other lines and 
spheres than those of their enthusiastic choos- 
ing far nobler things than they could ever have 
wrought had their own plans been carried out. 
John Kitto, when a lad, met with a misfortune 



294 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

which seemed altogether to unfit him for usefulness. 
By a terrible fall he received severe bodily injuries 
and was rendered totally and permanently deaf. 
The result was the turning of his life into new 
channels, in which he achieved a marvelous success, 
becoming one of the most voluminous and most in- 
structive of all writers of books to help in the 
illumination and interpretation of the Bible. God 
suffered the breaking and the complete shattering 
of the boy's hopes that the man might do a far 
grander work in other lines. But for the misfor- 
tune that seemed to unfit him for any useful pur- 
suit and to leave him a hopeless and pitiable object 
of charity, he probably would never have been more 
than an obscure mechanic; but now his books are in 
hundreds of thousands of libraries and his name is a 
familiar household word in nearly every intelligent 
Christian home in the English-speaking world. 

A young man at the completion of his theological 
course offered himself as a missionary, and was 
accepted. Full of glowing earnestness and ani- 
mated by a deep love for Christ, he sailed away 
to a foreign field, hoping there to spend his life in 
telling the story of redemption. After a brief 
experience, however, he was compelled to abandon 
his missionary work and with great grief and re- 



BROKEN LIVES. 295 

luctance return to his native country. Not only 
was his health broken, but he had permanently 
lost his voice in the experiment, and was thus dis- 
qualified for the work of preaching anywhere. It 
was a sad hour to the ardent young minister when 
this fact became apparent to his mind. His was 
indeed a broken life. All his hopes and expecta- 
tions of consecrated service lay like dead flowers 
at his feet; he seemed doomed thenceforward to 
an inactive and a fruitless life. 

So it appeared at that moment. But, returning to 
his own land, he soon found work for his brain and 
pen in editorial lines, and entered upon a service of 
incalculable value to the Church. In this field for 
thirty busy years he wrought incessantly for his 
Master. God suffered his life as a missionary to 
be broken that in another sphere — one no less im- 
portant — he might render a service probably greater 
far than he could have rendered had he wrought all 
his thirty years in a foreign land. 

These are only illustrations of what God does 
with earth's " broken lives " that are truly conse- 
crated to him. He even seems sometimes to break 
them himself that they may become more largely 
useful. At least, he can use broken lives in his 
service just as well as whole ones; indeed, it often 



296 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

appears as if men cannot do much for God and for 
the blessing of the world until they are " broken 
vessels." 

God seems to be able to do little with earth's 
unbroken things, and therefore almost always he 
chooses broken things with which to do his work 
in this world. It was with broken pitchers that 
Gideon won his great victory; it was on broken 
pieces of the ship that Saint Paul and his com- 
panions escaped to land after their shipwreck; it 
was by the breaking of Mary's alabaster box that 
the Master was anointed and the world filled with 
the gracious perfume of love ; it was by the break- 
ing of the precious humanity of Jesus that redemp- 
tion was made for man. It is by the breaking of 
our hearts that we become acceptable offerings on 
God's altar ; it is by broken lives — broken by pain, 
trouble and sorrow — that God chiefly blesses the 
world ; it is by the shattering of our little human 
plans that God's great perfect plan goes on in us 
and through us ; it is by crushing our lives until 
their beauty seems entirely destroyed that God 
makes us blessings in this world. Not many men 
nor many women without suffering in some form 
become largely helpful to others. It seems as if 
we could not be fit instruments for God to use to 



BROKEN LIVES. 297 

speak his words and breathe the songs of his love 
and cany to others the benedictions of his grace 
until his chastening hand has done its sharp, keen 
work upon our lives. 

A piece of wood once bitterly complained because 
it was being cut and filled with rifts and holes ; but 
he who held the wood and whose knife was cutting 
into it so remorselessly did not listen to the sore 
complaining. He was making a flute out of the 
wood he held, and was too wise to desist when 
entreated so to do. He said, "Oh, thou foolish 
piece of wood, without these rifts and holes thou 
wouldest be only a mere stick for ever — a bit of 
hard black ebony with no power to make music 
or to be of use in any way. These rifts that I am 
making in thee, which seem to be destroying thee, 
will change thee into a flute, and thy sweet music 
then shall charm the souls of men. My cutting 
thee is the making of thee, for then thou shalt be 
precious and valuable and a blessing in the world." 

This little parable, suggested by a passage in an 
eloquent sermon, needs no explanation. The flute 
whose music is so sweet as we hear its notes in the 
great orchestra was made a flute only by the knife 
that filled the wood with rifts and holes which 
seemed its destruction. Without these merciless 



298 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

cuttings it could have been for ever only a piece 
of dull wood, dumb and musicless. It is the same 
with most human lives ; it is only when the hand 
of chastening has cut into them that they begin to 
yield sweet music. David could never have sung 
his sweetest songs had he not been sorely afflicted ; 
his afflictions made his life an instrument on which 
God could breathe the music of his love to charm 
and soothe the hearts of men. This is the story, 
too, of all true poetry and true music : not till the 
life is broken is it ready for the Master's use. At 
best we are but instruments, musicless save when 
God breathes through us. 

" We are but organs mute till a master touches the keys — 
Verily, vessels of earth into which God poureth the wine ; 
Harps are we, silent harps that have hung in the willow trees, 
Dumb till our heartstrings swell and break with a pulse 
divine." 

Then we cannot even be instruments fit for God's 
use until our hearts have been broken by penitence 
and our lives rent by suffering. 

There ought to be great comfort in this for those 
who are under God's chastening hand. His design 
is to fit them for nobler usefulness, to make them 
instruments whose keys will respond to the divine 
touch and through whose rifts the divine Spirit can 



BROKEN LIVES. 299 

breathe strains of holy love. We ought to be bet- 
ter able to endure pain and suffering when we re- 
member what God is doing with us. 

Thus we see that a life is not a failure because it 
is broken. Broken health is naturally discourag- 
ing ; but if God be in it, we need not be disheart- 
ened : he is able to make more of us with our 
shattered health than we could have made of our- 
selves with athletic robustness. Broken life-plans 
appear to be failures; but when God's great plan 
runs on in our life, without hindrance or interrup- 
tion, through the fragments of our little purposes, 
there is no failure. We groan over our broken 
days when by outside interruptions we are pre- 
vented from accomplishing the tasks we had set 
for ourselves in the morning; but if we give our 
day to God at its beginning and he chooses to as- 
sign us other things to do than those we had pur- 
posed — his things instead of our own — we ought 
not to say in the evening that we have had a 
broken day. What we call interruptions are sim- 
ply God's plan breaking into ours. There is no 
doubt that his way is better than ours. Besides, 
it is necessary for us all to learn our lesson of 
submission, and there is need for the discipline 
of interruption. 



300 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

" I would have gone : God bade me stay ; 
I would have worked : God bade me rest ; 
He broke my will from day to day ; 
He read my yearnings unexpressed, 
And said them nay." 

Many of God's children are found among earth's 
unsuccessful ones. This world has no use for bro- 
ken lives ; it casts them aside and hurries on, leav- 
ing them behind. Only successful men reach earth's 
goals and are crowned with its crowns. But God 
is the God of the unsuccessful. Christ takes earth's 
" bruised reeds " and deals with them so gently that 
they get back again all their old beauty. No life 
is so broken, whether by sorrow or by sin, that it 
may not through divine grace enter the kingdom 
of God and at last be presented faultless, arrayed in 
heavenly brightness, before the throne of glory • 
Heaven is filling with earth's broken lives, but there 
no life will be broken or marred ; all will be per- 
fect in their beauty and complete in their blessedness, 
bearing the image of the Redeemer. 

Many of earth's noblest and most useful lives 
appear to end in the very midst of their usefulness, 
to be cut off while their work is unfinished — per- 
haps when it is scarcely begun. We easily recon- 
cile ourselves to the dying of an aged Christian, 



BROKEN LIVES. 301 

because he has filled up the allotted measure of 
human life. We quote the Scripture words about 
a shock of corn coming in in its season ; probably 
we lay a little sheaf of wheat on the coffin or cut a 
sheaf on the stone set up to mark the place where 
the weary body sleeps. 

But when a young person dies we do not have 
the same feeling. We do not so easily reconcile 
ourselves to the ending of the life. We had ex- 
pected our friend to live to be old, and are sorely 
disappointed in his early death. We do not quote 
the words about the corn, nor do we put the hand- 
ful of wheat in the cold fingers or carve it on the 
stone. We seek for emblems rather which denote 
too early a death, cutting on the marble an un- 
opened bud, a broken shaft or other symbol of 
incompleteness. 

Yet when we think more deeply of the matter, 
should a death in bright sunny youth or in mid- 
life be regarded as untimely ? Should the life thus 
cut off be considered an incomplete one ? Should 
not Christian faith lay the ripe sheaf on the coffin 
of the godly young man and speak of his life, if it 
has been noble and true, as a shock of corn coming 
in in its season ? 

If every life is a plan of God, is not the date of 



302 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

its ending part of that plan? We would not call 
the life of Jesus incomplete, although he died at 
three and thirty. Indeed, as he drew to the end, 
he said to his Father, " I have finished the work 
which thou gavest me to do," and with his expiring 
breath he cried aloud in triumph, "It is finished !" 
It does not, therefore, require years to make a life 
complete. One may die young and not depart too 
soon. It is possible for a life to remain in this 
world but for one day or one hour, and yet be 
complete according to God's plan for it. 

To our view, it is a broken life which is taken 
away in the midst of great usefulness. It seems to 
our limited vision that every one should live to 
complete the good work he has begun. But this 
is by no means necessary. The work is not ours, 
but God's ; each one of us does a little part of it, 
and then as we fall out another comes and does his 
part just next to ours. One may sow a field and die 
before the reaping-time, and another gathers the 
sheaves. The reaping was not part of the sower's 
work. We may begin something, and then be 
called away before finishing it. Evidently, the 
finishing was not our work, but belongs to some 
other's life-plan. We must not say that a man's 
life is a broken one because he did only a little part 



BROKEN LIVES. 303 

of some great and good work ; if he was faithful, 
he did all that was allotted to him. God has ready 
some other one whose mission it is to do what we 
supposed it was our friend's mission to do. The 
poet E. R. Sill has expressed this truth in lines 
which are well worth quoting : 

" Fret not that thy day is gone 
And the task is still undone : 
'Twas not thine, it seems, at all ; 
Near to thee it chanced to fall — 
Close enough to stir thy brain 
And to vex thy heart in vain. 

" Somewhere in a nook forlorn 
Yesterday a babe was born : 
He shall do thy waiting task ; 
All thy questions he shall ask, 
And the answers will be given, 
Whispered lightly out of heaven. 

" His shall be no stumbling feet, 
Falling when they should be fleet ; 
He shall hold no broken clue ; 
Friends shall unto him be true ; 
Men shall love him ; falsehood's aim 
Shall not shatter his good name. 

" Day shall nerve his arm with light, 
Slumber soothe him all the night ; 
Summer's peace and winter's storm 
Help him all his will perform. 
'Tis enough of joy for thee 
His high service to foresee." 



304 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

It is, then, a lesson of faith that we should learn. 
We ought never to be afraid of God's providences 
when they seem to break up our lives and crush our 
hopes — even to turn us away as Christ's true disci- 
ples from our chosen paths of usefulness and serv- 
ice. God knows what he w T ants to do with us, 
how he can best use us and where and in what lines 
of ministry he would have us serve, or whether he 
would have us only " stand and wait." When he 
shuts one door, it is because he has another stand- 
ing open for our feet ; when he thwarts our plans, 
it is that his own plan may go on in us and through 
us ; when he breaks our lives to pieces, it is because 
they will do more for his glory and the world's 
good broken and shattered than whole. 



XXVI. 

COMING TO THE END. 

" Life, we've been long together 
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather. 
*Tis hard to part when friends are dear ; 
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear ; 
Then steal away, give little warning : 
Choose thine own time ; 
Say not ' Good-night P but in some brighter clime 
Bid me ' Good-morning P " 

Mrs. Bakbauld. 

TTTE are always coming to the end of something; 
nothing earthly is long-lived. Many things 
last but for a day ; many, for only a moment. 
You look at the sunset-clouds, and there is a glory 
in them which thrills your soul ; you turn to call a 
friend to behold the splendor with you, and it has 
vanished, and a new splendor — as wondrous, though 
altogether different — is in its place. You cross a 
field on an early summer morning, and every leaf 
and every blade of grass is covered with dewdrops, 
which sparkle like millions of diamonds as the 
first sunbeams fall on them ; but a few moments 

20 305 



306 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

later you return, and not a dewdrop is to be seen. 
You walk through your garden one summer morn- 
ing, and note its wondrous variety of flowers in 
bloom, with their marvelous tints and their exqui- 
site loveliness ; to-morrow you walk again along the 
same paths, and there is just as great variety and 
as rich beauty, but all is changed. Many of yes- 
terday's flowers are gone, and many new ones have 
bloomed out. 

So it is in all our personal experiences. Life is 
a kaleidoscope; every moment the view changes. 
The beautiful things of one glance are missing at 
the next, while new things — just as lovely, though 
not the same — appear in their place. The joys we 
had yesterday we do not have to-day, though our 
hearts may be quite as happy now, with gladness just 
as pure and deep. In a sense, to most of us, life is 
routine, an eudless repetition — the same tasks, the 
same duties, the same cares, day after day, year 
after year ; yet even in this routine there is constant 
change. There is an interstitial life that flows 
through the channel of our daily experiences and 
that is ever new. We meet new people, we have 
new things, w r e read new books, we see new pictures, 
we learn new facts, while at the same time many of 
the familiar things are continually dropping out of 



COMING TO THE END, 307 

our lives. The face we saw yesterday we miss to- 
day, and there are new faces in the throng ; the songs 
we sang last year we do not sing this year ; the 
books we used to read with zest we do not care for 
any longer ; the pleasures that once delighted us 
have no more charm for us ; the toys that meant 
so much to childhood and were so real have no 
fascination whatever for manhood and for woman- 
hood ; the happy days of youth, with their sports 
and games, their schools and studies, their friend- 
ships and visions, are left behind, though never 
forgotten, as we pass on into actual life with its 
harder tasks, its rougher paths, its heavier burdens, 
its deeper studies, its sterner realities. So we are 
ever comiug to the end of old things and to the 
beginning of new things. We keep nothing long. 
This is true of our friendships. Our hearts are 
made to love and to cling. Very early the little 
child begins to tie itself to other lives by the 
subtle cords of affection. All through life we go 
on gathering friends and binding them to us by ties 
of varying strength, sometimes slight as a gossamer- 
thread and as easily broken, sometimes strong as life 
itself — the very knitting of soul to soul. Yet our 
friendships are ever changing. Some of them we 
outgrow and leave behind us as we pass from child- 



308 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

hood and youth to maturity ; some of them have 
only an external attachment, and easily fall off and 
are scarcely missed and leave no scar. This is true 
of many of our associations in business, in society, 
in life's ordinary comminglings. We are thrown into 
more or less intimate relations with people, not by 
any attractive affinity, any drawing of heart, but 
by circumstances ; and, while there may be pleasant 
congeniality, there is no real blending or weaving 
together, life with life; consequently, the ending 
of such associations produces no sore wrench or 
pain, no heart-pang. All through life these friends 
of circumstances are changing ; we have the same 
no two successive years. 

In every true life there is an inner circle of 
loved ones who are bound to us by ties woven out 
of our very heart's fibres. The closest of these 
are the members of our own household. The 
child's first friend is the child's mother ; then comes 
the father; and then the other members of the 
family are taken into the sacred clasp of the open- 
ing life. By and by the young heart reaches out- 
side and chooses other friends from the great world 
of common people and out of the multitude of 
passing associates, and binds them to itself with 
friendship's strongest cords. Thus all true men 



COMING TO THE END. 309 

and true women come up to mature years clustered 
about by a circle of friends who are dear to them 
as their own life. Our debt to our life's pure and 
holy friendships is incalculable ; they make us what 
we are. The mother's heart is the child's first 
schoolroom. The early home-influences give their 
tints and hues to the whole after-life; a gentle 
home where only kindly words are spoken and 
loving thoughts and dispositions are cherished fills 
with tender beauty the lives that go out from its 
shelter. All early friendships print their own stamp 
on the ripening character. Our souls are like the 
sensitive plates which the photographer puts into 
his camera, which catch every image whose re- 
flection falls upon them and hold it ready to be 
brought out in the finished picture. Says George 
MacDonald : 

"I think that nothing made is lost — 
That not a moon has ever shone, 
That not a cloud my eyes hath crossed, 
But to my soul is gone ; 

"That all the lost years garnered lie 
In this thy casket, my dim soul, 
And thou wilt, once, the key apply 
And show the shining whole." 

True in general, this is especially true of the 



310 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

pure friendships of our lives. None of the impres- 
sions that they make on our lives are ever lost ; they 
sink away into our souls, and then reappear at length 
in our character. 

But even these tender and holy friendships we 
cannot keep for ever ; one by one they fall off or 
are torn out of our lives. There are many ways 
of losing friends. Sometimes, without explanation, 
without offence or a shadow of a reason of which 
we know, without hint or warning given, our 
friend suddenly withdraws from us and goes his 
own way, and through life we never have hint or 
token of the old friendship. 

" Oh, what was the hour and the day, 
The moment, I lost you? 
I thought you were walking my way ; 
I turned to accost you, 

"And silence and emptiness met 
My word half unspoken. 

" Oh, what was the hour and the day, 
The moment, you left me, 
When you went on your separate way, 
Oh, friend, and bereft me ?" 

Some friends are lost to us, not by any sudden 
rupture, but by a slow and gradual falling apart 
which goes on imperceptibly through long periods, 



COMING TO THE END. 311 

tie after tie unclasping until all are loosed, when 
hearts once knit together in holy union find them- 
selves hopelessly estranged. A little bird dropped a 
seed on a rock. The seed fell into a crevice and 
grew, and at length the great rock was rent asunder 
by the root of the tree that sprang up. So little 
seeds of alienation sometimes fall between two 
friends, and in the end produce a separation which 
rends their friendship and sunders them for ever. 

" No sudden treason turns 
The long-accustomed loyalty to hate, 
But years bring weariness for sweet content ; 
And fondness, daily sustenance of love, 
Which use should make a tribute easier paid, 
First grudged, and then withheld, the heart is starved ; 
And, though compassion or remorseful thought 
Of happy days departed bring again 
The ancient tenderness in seeming flood, 
Not less it ebbs and ebbs till all is bare." 

No picture could be sadder than this, but the 
saddest thing about it is its truthfulness and the 
frequency of its repetition in actual life. Many a 
friendship is lost by this slow process of impercep- 
tibly growing apart. 

Then, friends are lost through misunderstandings 
which in many cases a few honest words at first might 
have removed. The Scriptures say, "A whisperer 



312 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

separateth chief friends." Friends are lost, too, in 
the sharp competitions of business, in the keen 
rivalries of ambition; for love of money or of 
fame or of power or of social distinction many 
throw away holy friendships. 

Friends are lost, too, by death. Often this pro- 
cess begins early; a child is bereft of father or 
of mother, or of both. All through life the sad 
story of bereavement goes on. As the leaves are 
torn from the trees by the rude storm, so are friend- 
ships plucked from our lives by Death's remorseless 
hand. There is something inexpressibly sad in the 
loneliness of old people who have survived the loss 
of nearly all their friends, and who stand almost 
entirely alone amid the gathering shadows of their 
life's eventide. Once they were rich in human af- 
fection. Children sat about their table and grew up 
in their happy home ; many other true hearts were 
drawn to them along the years. But one by one 
their children are gathered home into God's bosom, 
until all are gone. Other friends — some in one way, 
and some in another — are also removed. At last 
husband or wife is called away, and one only sur- 
vives of the once happy pair, lonely and desolate 
amid the ruin of all earthly gladness and the tender 
memories of lost joys. 



COMING TO THE END. 313 

Were it not for the Christian's hope, these losses 
of friends along the years would be infinitely sad, 
without alleviation. But the wonderful grace of 
God conies not only with its revelation of after-life, 
but with its present healing. God binds up his 
people's hearts in their sorrow and comforts them 
in their loneliness. The children and the friends 
who are gone are not lost; hand will clasp hand 
again and heart will clasp heart in inseparable re- 
union. The grave is only winter, and after win- 
ter comes spring with its wonderful resurrections, 
in which everything beautiful that seemed lost 
comes again. 

" God does not give us new flowers every year : 
When the spring winds blow o'er the pleasant places, 
The same dear things lift up the same fair faces : 
The violet is here! 

" It all comes back, the odor, grace and hue — 
Each sweet relation of its life — repeated ; 
No blank is left, no longing-for is cheated : 
It is the thing we knew. 

" So, after the death- winter, must it be — 
God will not set strange signs in heavenly places ; 
The old love will look out from the old faces — 
My own, I shall have thee.' 7 

We come to the end, also, of many of our life's 
visions and hopes as the years go on. Flowers are 



314 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

not the only things that fade ; morning clouds are 
not the only things that pass away ; sunset splendors 
are not the only gorgeous pictures that vanish. 
"What comes of all childhood's fancies, of youth's 
day-dreams and of manhood's and womanhood's 
vision-fabrics ? How many of them are ever real- 
ized? Life is full of illusions. Many of our 
ships that we send out to imagined lands of wealth 
to bring back to us rich cargoes never return at all, 
or, if they do, only creep back empty with torn 
sails and battered hulks. Disappointments come to 
all of us along life's course. Many of our ventures 
on life's sea are wrecked and never come back to 
port; many of our ardent hopes prove only bril- 
liant bubbles that burst as we grasp them. 

Yet if we are living for the higher things — the 
things that are unseen and eternal — the shattering 
of our life's dreams and the failures of our earthly 
hopes are only apparent losses. The things we can 
see are but the shadows of things we cannot see. 
"We chase the shadow, supposing it to be a reality ; 
it eludes us and we do not grasp it, but instead we 
clasp in our hand that invisible thing of which the 
visible was only the shadow. A young man has 
his visions of possible achievement and attainment ; 
one by one, with toil and pain, yet with quenchless 



COMING TO THE END. 315 

ardor, he follows them. All along his life to its 
close bright hopes shine before hiru, and he con- 
tinues to press after them with unwearying quest. 
Perhaps he does not realize one of them, and he 
comes to old age with empty hands — an unsuccess- 
ful man, the world says — yet all the while his faith 
in God has not faltered, and he has been gathering 
into his soul the treasures of spiritual conquest; 
in his inner life he has been growing richer every 
day. The struggle after earthly possession may 
have yielded nothing tangible, but the struggle 
has developed strength, courage, faith and other 
noble qualities in the man himself. The bright 
visions faded as he grasped them, leaving nothing 
but disappointment ; yet if his quest was worthy, 
he is richer in spirit. 

Thus, God gives us friends, and our heart's ten- 
drils twine about them ; they stay with us for a 
time, and then leave us. Our loss is very sore, 
and we go out bereft and lonely along life's paths. 
Even love seems to have been in vain, yielding 
nothing in the end but sorrow. It seems to us 
that we are poorer than if we had never loved at 
all ; we have nothing left of all that was so pre- 
cious to us. But we have not lost all. Loving 
our friends drew out to ripeness the possibilities of 



316 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

love in our own hearts ; then the friends were taken 
away, but the ripened love remains. Our hearts 
are empty, but our lives are larger. So it is with 
all our experiences of disappointment and loss if 
our hearts are fixed on Christ and if we are living 
for the invisible things ; we miss the shadow only 
to clasp in heart-possession the imperishable reality. 
The illusions of faith and hope and love are but 
the falling away of the rude scaffolding used in 
erecting the building, that the beautiful temple it- 
self may stand out in enduring splendor. 

We come also to the end of trials and sorrows. 
Every night has a morning, and, however dark it 
may be, we have only to wait a little while for the 
sun to rise, when light will chase away the gloom. 
Every black cloud that gathers in the sky and blots 
out the blue or hides the stars passes away ere long ; 
and when it is gone there is no stain left on the blue 
and not a star's beam is quenched or even dimmed. 
The longest winter that destroys all life and beauty 
in field, forest and garden is sure to come to an end, 
giving place to the glad springtime which reclothes 
the earth in verdure as beautiful as that which per- 
ished. So it is with life's pains and troubles. Sick- 
ness gives place to health. Grief, however bitter, is 
comforted by the tender comfort of divine love. 



COMING TO THE END. 317 

Sorrow, even the sorest, passes away and joy conies 
again, not one glad note hushed, its music even en- 
riched by its experience of sadness. 

" No note of sorrow but shall melt 
In sweetest chord unguessed ; 
No labor, all too pressing felt, 
But ends in quiet rest." 

Thus in a Christian life no shadow lingers long. 
Then it will be but a little time till all shadows shall 
flee away before heaven's glorious light, when for 
ever life will go on without a pain or a sorrow. 

There is another ending : we shall come to the 
end of life itself. We shall come to the close of 
our last day ; we shall do our last piece of work, 
and take our last walk, and write our last letter, 
and sing our last song, and speak our last " Good- 
night ; w then to-morrow we shall be gone, and the 
places that have known us shall know us no more. 
Whatever other experiences we may have or may 
miss, we shall not miss dying. Every human path, 
through whatever scenes it may wander, must bend 
at last into the Valley of Shadows. 

Yet we ought not to think of death as calamity 
or disaster ; if we are Christians, it will be the 
brightest day of our whole life when we are called 
to go away from earth to heaven. Work will then 



318 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

be finished, conflict will be over, sorrow will be 
past, death itself will be left behind, and life in its 
full, true, rich meaning will only really begin. 

The criticalness of life should lead us to be al- 
ways ready for death. Though we are plainly 
taught by our Lord not to be anxious about any- 
thing that the future may have in store for us, we 
are as plainly taught to live so as to be prepared 
for any event which may occur. Indeed, the only 
way to eliminate care from our present is to be 
ready for any possible future. Death is not merely 
a possible, but is an inevitable, event in every one's 
future ; we can live untroubled by dread of it only 
by being ever ready for it. Preparation for death 
is made by living a true Christian life. If we are 
in Christ by faith, and then follow Christ, doing 
his will day by day, we are prepared for death, and 
it can never surprise us unready. 

" It matters little what hour o' the day 
The righteous falls asleep : death cannot come 
To him untimely who is fit to die. 
The less of the cold earth, the more of heaven ; 
The briefer life, the longer immortality ." 

True preparation for death is made when we close 
each day as if it were the last. We are never sure 
of to-morrow ; we should leave nothing incomplete 



COMING TO THE END. 319 

any night. Each single separate little day should 
be a miniature life complete in itself, with nothing 
of duty left over. God gives us life by days, and 
with each day he gives its own allotment of duty— 
a portion of his plan to be wrought out, a fragment 
of his purpose to be accomplished by us. Says F. 
W. Faber, " Every hour comes with some little 
fagot of God's will fastened upon its back." Our 
mission is to find that bit of divine will and do 
it. Well-lived days make completed years, and the 
years well lived as they come make a life beautiful 
and full. In such a life no special preparation of 
any kind is needed ; he who lives thus is always 
ready. Each day prepares for the next, and the 
last day prepares for glory. Susan Coolidge 
writes : 

" If I were told that I must die to-morrow — 

That the next sun 
Which sinks should bear me past all fear and sorrow 

For any one, 
All the fight fought, all the short journey through — 

What should I do? 

" I do not think that I should shrink or falter, 

But just go on, 
Doing my work, nor change nor seek to alter 

Aught that is gone, 
But rise and move and love and smile and pray 

For one more day ; 



320 PRACTICAL RELIGION. 

" And, lying down at night for a last sleeping, 
Say in that ear 
Which hearkens ever, ' Lord, within thy keeping 

How should I fear ? 
And when to-morrow brings thee nearer still, 
Do thou thy will.' " 

If we thus live, coming to the end of life need 
have no terror for us. Dying does not interrupt 
life for a moment. Death is not a wall cutting off 
the path, but a gate through which passing out of 
this world of shadows and unrealities we shall find 
ourselves in the immediate presence of the Lord 
and in the midst of the glories of the eternal home. 

We need have only one care — that we live well 
our one short life as we go on, that we love God 
and our neighbor, that we believe on Christ and 
obey his commandments, that we do each duty as it 
comes to our hand, and do it well. Then no sud- 
den coming of the end will ever surprise us unpre- 
pared. Then, while glad to live as long as it may 
be God's will to leave us here, we shall welcome 
the gentle angel who comes with the golden joy to 
lead us to rest and home. 



THE END. 




<• ''-teg* "^ 



